CrossCountry On-Board Safety
Discover how CrossCountry works hard to keep colleagues and passengers safe throughout your journeys.
Keeping our passengers safe while travelling with CrossCountry is paramount. This is why we have implemented a number of policies and procedures to ensure that every passenger is safe and comfortable throughout your journey. With continuous monitoring to ensure that our policies are having the right impact, you can travel with confidence in your safety and security on CrossCountry trains.
On this page, you can find information on:
How to Report Anti-Social Behaviour on CrossCountry Trains
Before setting off on your journey, we recommend downloading the British Transport Police Railway Guardian app. While the majority of passengers enjoy safe and pleasant travel across the entire UK rail network, including CrossCountry trains, it is important to know how to report incidents when they arise in order to help you feel as safe and comfortable as possible.
This app allows you to report anti-social behaviour, criminal behaviour, or police concerns directly to the British Transport Police. Once you have the app, you can also access reports in real time. Another way to report incidents to the British Transport Police is by texting 61016.
When you are on-board CrossCountry trains, you can also contact a member of staff and report your concerns. You will be able to identify CrossCountry staff on-board by their uniform. All of our frontline staff are trained in customer service, safety, and safeguarding, and some staff wear body-worn CCTV cameras to help everybody on-board our trains feel more secure.
Tackling Sexual Harassment On-Board
Sexual harassment on-board CrossCountry trains is taken very seriously. We have a zero-tolerance policy and encourage our passengers to report any witnessed sexual harassment immediately to a member of staff or the British Transport Police.
A number of behaviours and actions are considered sexual harassment, including catcalling, cyber-flashing, exposing, pressing, staring, touching, and upskirting. If you experience or witness any of these actions on-board, we encourage you to report it immediately providing you feel safe to do so. If possible and safe, the best way to report sexual harassment is to get a detailed description of any persons you feel are harassing you or others.
Be Kind Campaign
CrossCountry are launching our ‘Be Kind’ campaign, promoting kindness on-board and around our trains to ensure the safety, security, and comfort of all passengers and CrossCountry colleagues.
At CrossCountry, we love it when you take us on your journey. Transporting passengers around the UK is a privilege. However, our colleagues have too often been subject to anti-social behaviour. We invite and encourage all passengers and customers to remember that our staff are people who deserve to be treated with respect and kindness. Whether you’re on-board a CrossCountry train as a passenger or colleague, we are all people, and we all deserve kindness.
When you’re travelling with us, remember to be kind. Be kind to fellow passengers and be kind to our CrossCountry team.
How to Stay Safe on CrossCountry Trains
At CrossCountry, we pride ourselves on making sure our passengers enjoy comfortable and safe journeys. Wherever you’re going, it is our responsibility and privilege to ensure that you arrive safely and securely. We have strict safety and security measures in place for this reason, but there are also some ways that passengers can ensure their own safety and security on-board. Join us to discover how to keep yourself and your belongings safe on CrossCountry trains.
- There is limited luggage storage space on-board our trains, so to ensure that your belongings are stored safely while you travel, make sure to consult our luggage policy ahead of travel.
- We encourage passengers to use luggage tags to easily identify their belongings, as well as padlocks on larger cases and bags.
- We are pleased to offer free WiFi on-board CrossCountry trains. If you have connected your device to our WiFi network, once you’ve finished scrolling, shopping, or watching your favourite show, we recommend that you pack your device away. Laptops, tablets, and phones left on tables and seats are at greater risk of theft.
- When you board your CrossCountry train, familiarise yourself with the train layout, emergency exits, any safety notices, and the CrossCountry staff uniform. This will help you to recognise a colleague if you are in need of assistance on your journey.
CrossCountry Trains Safety Policies
As a matter of policy, CrossCountry trains undertake risk assessments for all tasks where we consider there to be a risk to health and safety of our employees and customers. They are available for internal checking on the internal CrossCountry website and are continually reviewed in line with company policies. Where incidents occur, we review risk assessments to ensure that necessary changes and improvements are made to prioritise employee and customer safety at all times, and at all stages of the journey.
In line with our legal responsibilities, CrossCountry have an internal reporting database that holds key information on reported safety issues and incidents. We retain information on trends, incidents, accidents, and competencies, allowing the business to understand where faults have occurred and how they may be avoided in future.
At our periodic SSEG (Safety, Security, and Environmental) Meetings, some data is shared with leadership teams allowing for incidents and corrective actions to be tracked, and for leaders to continue to make informed decisions about on-board safety.
Every member of CrossCountry staff has the right to undertake their role in safety and security, and this is a right that we take seriously. CrossCountry’s WorkSafe procedure enables and empowers CrossCountry colleagues to stop and question any task they deem unsafe.
Where staff challenge the safety of a task, risk assessments can be undertaken, and control measures can be put in place to allow the task to go ahead safely. Where tasks are challenged on the basis of safety, specific documentation must be completed in order to evidence that tasks have been made safe, or that safety precautions have been explained to colleagues before the task was undertaken.
At CrossCountry trains, Safety & Security business partners are in place to assist and support our regional teams in implementing proper safety and security procedures at all times, as well as colleagues in Head Office and support areas.
Periodically, parties responsible for safety and security come together to discuss data, trends, issues, and potential improvements. Each period, the business hosts a Safety, Security & Environmental Meeting, which is chaired by Managing Directors or Heads of Safety.
As well as this periodic meeting dedicated to discussing and improving safety within CrossCountry as a business, there are several other meetings which cover safety themes. One such meeting is the quarterly Joint Safety Council, in which the MD or Head of Safety comes together with Train Union representatives to discuss staff safety. Additionally, our Annual Safety Conference sees elected Health & Safety representatives from the workforce discussing safety related issues.
In addition to internal CrossCountry safety meetings, representatives of the company attend industry working groups with partners including Network Rail, British Transport Police, Rail Delivery Group, and the Department for Transport.
CCTV Policy
At CrossCountry trains, we are proud to state that in 2024, we have heavily invested in 250 new state-of-the-art body-worn cameras. These body-worn CCTV cameras are used in collecting evidence and improving personal security for members of our staff, especially those working on-board our trains. Staff are actively encouraged to wear these cameras on duty to help them feel more secure whilst working.
Any colleague who wants to use a body-worn camera is encouraged to do so, as this CCTV system makes everybody on-board our trains safer. Uptake in body-worn camera usage has been strong, and we hope that it will continue to grow. Among other things, these cameras record and provide factual evidence for the police, if intervention and investigation is necessary.
With our growing fleet of trains, we are planning to install new on-board CCTV across CrossCountry trains to further improve on-board safety.
CrossCountry Staff Safety Training
To keep our staff, customers, and passengers safe, CrossCountry is committed to running regular safety training and briefings to all staff. By training all colleagues to effectively manage and de-escalate unsafe situations, CrossCountry prioritises and secures the safety of colleagues and passengers.
In line with legal requirements, CrossCountry is compliant with the National Railways security programme. This includes induction training and security updates for all staff, with regular notices and updates on safety procedures.
CrossCountry trains host quarterly safety briefings to all of our colleagues across the business. During these briefings, staff are updated on policies and procedures relating to safety, across all areas of the business. This includes operational, environmental, personal, and occupational safety, as well as security.
Between safety briefings, colleagues are also briefed on changes and updates through safety and security notices. With quarterly briefings and intermittent updates as they occur, we ensure that CrossCountry staff are aware and up-to-date on safety and security practices.
All colleagues are required to undertake conflict management training when they join us at CrossCountry, with periodic refresher courses. The personal security of our staff is critical to CrossCountry, so we will continue to enhance safety training and briefing to all colleagues, including surrounding conflict management. With strong understanding of how to manage and resolve conflict on-duty, both colleagues and customers are kept safer.
At CrossCountry trains, we are proud to be accredited under the British Transport Police’s Safeguarding on Rail scheme. This accreditation is evidence of our commitment to training staff to identify potential safeguarding risks and take the correct, necessary steps to intervene and protect those at risk.
Identifying vulnerable people and situations, including young children at risk of harm, and women and girls at risk of violence, and more, are some key areas that we aim to drive improvement in. An example of this is being vigilant of County Lines grooming gangs, wherein vulnerable people are groomed into criminal activity. In cases such as this, CrossCountry staff have a moral and legal duty to challenge, report, and address risks.
CrossCountry and the British Transport Police
To keep our passengers and colleagues safe, CrossCountry is in close communication and collaboration with the British Transport Police. Explore more information about how we work with the British Transport Police to ensure safety on-board our trains.
As well as British Transport Police supporting CrossCountry with a physical policing presence on some journeys, we also encourage all passengers to download the free BTP Railway Guardian app to report and register any incidents experienced on-board.
CrossCountry representatives are now in attendance at every regional BTP tasking meeting, allowing our leaders to request British Transport Police presence in specific locations at specific times. This has enabled us to make significant progress in policing football and events, making travelling on CrossCountry trains safer even at busier times.
To make sure that our BTP patrols are positioned most effectively to tackle unsafe and anti-social behaviour, we track incidents and trends using out SMIS Safety Management system. Data is analysed periodically to ensure that hotspots are covered by British Transport Police patrols.
See it, say it, sorted. If passengers witness or experience suspicious or anti-social behaviour on-board CrossCountry trains, we encourage them to report it to the British Transport Police to resolve the issue.
Following an unfortunate increase in theft of passenger property on-board our trains, we have tasked the British Transport Police to patrol select services in plain clothes. This has resulted in multiple arrests, keeping passengers secure.
The introduction of plain clothes officers is also part of our strategy to address County Lines risk, to deter risk and to identify whether uniformed patrols are necessary.