1. The Home Office report: Action Against Hate, 2016, indicates that public transport is a key area of concern for hate crimes being conducted toward people with disabilities. What action is your organisation taking to reduce hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on your public transport services in your area? 2. Please send me your policies and strategies for dealing with the potential for hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on public transport services in your area. 3. What training interventions do you stipulate or suggest to help public transport staff be aware of, and manage, the potential of hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on public transport services in your area? 4. How does your organisation raise awareness of the possibility of hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on public transport services in your area? 5. Please send to me your published equality objectives in relation to public transport provision in your area and clarify how you make these objectives accessible to the public. 6. Please send me any progress that you have made toward meeting equality objectives concerning public transport in your area. 7. Please clarify how you incorporate the Public Sector Equality Duty in your provision of public transport including when contracts are agreed with contracting service operators?

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TfL Ref: 2964-1718

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16 January 2018 asking for information about managing hostility and abuse against disabled people on public transport. I apologise for the delay in replying to you.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you require. You asked:

1. The Home Office report: Action Against Hate, 2016, indicates that public transport is a key area of concern for hate crimes being conducted toward people with disabilities. What action is your organisation taking to reduce hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on your public transport services in your area?

London’s transport system continues to be a safe, low crime environment where very few people experience or witness crime yet we know that safety and security concerns continue to deter many Londoners from travelling. Fear of crime can affect people’s confidence, their willingness to travel and their choice of transport mode. This can restrict access to all that London has to offer and affect Londoners’ quality of life. Women, BAME Londoners and disabled Londoners are significantly more likely than men, white Londoners, and non-disabled Londoners to be concerned about their safety and security when travelling around the Capital. Hate crime accounts for 5% of total crime on TfL’s public transport network. We know that some groups are very concerned about hate crime, and also that hate crime is under reported.

Transport for London significantly funds the British Transport, Metropolitan and City of London Police to help improve transport safety and security. Further information can be found here .

Frontline staff have a key role in helping to prevent and deal with crime on the transport system. TfL actively encourages staff, including bus drivers, to report such incidents and to involve the police as necessary through the established channels for reporting and dealing with crime on the network. For example, where a bus driver witnesses or is made aware of any hate crime where they or a passenger feel threatened or in danger they are instructed to call the London Buses Control room which is co-located with the police to report the incident.  This means information can be passed to the police without delay to enable officers to attend the scene where appropriate and for essential CCTV footage to be accessed for investigation.

Transport for London and partners including the Metropolitan police and British Transport Police launched a priority project in June 2016 with the purpose of tackling hate crime on the transport network. The hate crime priority was identified through the Partnership Strategic Assessment and community and political concerns particularly in relation to Anti-Muslim hate crime, although all five strands of monitored hate crime are included in the project, including disability hate.

The primary aims of the project are to reassure community groups, passengers and staff that crime is low on the network, and to provide confidence that if they ever experience hostility they should report it to the police who will investigate. Hate crime has absolutely no place on our transport services or anywhere else in society. Activities include:

Monthly engagement events

Under the operation name Safer Travel for All (STFA), we, with our partners in the police, have developed a programme of engagement events and activities designed to reassure the community and give advice about what to do if they ever experience hostility which they perceive to be because of who they are.

Engagement events take place every month with officers from TfL, the MPS and the BTP. Days of engagement have been set in operational planners through to the end of 2018. Since the beginning of the project over 900 events have taken place.

On these dates, engagement takes place in three ways. Firstly, staff and officers are using opportunities during their regular duties to engage with passengers and find out how their experience is of travelling on public transport, and whether they have ever experienced or witnessed something which concerns them. Secondly, engagement events have been run at transport hubs around London, with officers and staff setting up stalls, using the opportunity of large numbers of passengers to raise the profile of STFA and encourage reporting. Thirdly, local MPS Safer Transport Teams (STTs) and BTP Neighbourhood Policing Teams have been engaging directly with community groups in their local area to build confidence in travelling and reporting any incidents which may occur.

National Hate Crime Awareness Week

In support of National Hate Crime Awareness Week (NHCAW), engagement activities take place each day over the week which included events at key transport hubs and engagement with local communities.

This engagement week has been held in October every year since 2009. National Hate Crime Awareness Week (NHCAW) was established to commemorate the dates of the three London nail bombs planted in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho.

Working with the police we developed a programme of engagement events to mark NHCAW. All partners were involved in organising over 200 events across London, with officers and staff actively promoting the #WeStandTogether hashtag. Officers and staff used a partnership leaflet to support meaningful engagement, reinforcing the message that the network is open and welcome to everyone, and hate crime will not be tolerated on our system. Tens of thousands of #WeStandTogether leaflets were distributed during the NHCAW.

In addition to the community and passenger engagement, TfL held a number of internal hate crime awareness events to promote NHCAW and to launch a new E-learning module on the TfL Ezone.

The press release relating to our NHCAW activity can be viewed here .

Training and staff awareness raising. Please see the response under question three.

1. Please send me your policies and strategies for dealing with the potential for hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on public transport services in your area.

    

   TfL doesn’t have a separate strategy specifically for dealing with hostility targeted towards people with disabilities, however the draft Mayor’s Transport Strategy has been published and includes proposals to improve personal safety and security and tackle high harm crimes including hate crime. The strategy can be found here https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/policy/mayors-transport-strategy/user_uploads/pub16_001_mts_online-2.pdf

    

    

   In further support of dealing with hate crime, The Mayor’s Police and Crime Plan: A Safer City for Londoners also includes a commitment to support the work of the MPS, the British Transport Police, the City of London Police and TfL to tackle hate crime on public transport. The plan can be found here https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mopac_police_and_crime_plan_2017-2021.pdf

    

    

   We chair a regular working group to ensure a consistent approach and co-ordinated activity to tackle hate crime. The aim of this work is to reassure the travelling public that the network is safe and to encourage anyone who experiences this type of behaviour to report it, so action can be taken against offenders. The activities listed in this reply help towards these aims. We are currently developing an action plan for 2018/19.

    

2. What training interventions do you stipulate or suggest to help public transport staff be aware of, and manage, the potential of hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on public transport services in your area?

    

   Hate crime awareness raising module

    

    

   TfL has developed a classroom based module for raising awareness of hate crime amongst front line staff. Around 600 staff have completed this module. The module includes a section on defining hate crime, ensuring staff understand the five monitored strands (based on the Home Office definition of hate crime). This has proven particularly beneficial in raising awareness of hate crime targeted at people with disabilities and gender identity, where there appears to be lower levels of awareness.

    

    

   The module builds on customer service and conflict management training which our staff receive. There are well established processes for staff to contact the police in the event of a crime or incident taking place. The module sets out to staff when they are expected to take action and how they can act in a safe and effective way when they witness hate crime, experience it themselves or are told about it by a colleague or customer.

    

    

   The module also provides guidance on how to successfully and safely act during an incident, giving staff advice and tips gathered from colleagues with experience of dealing with hostile situations. The module includes an overview of ‘non-complementary behaviour’, an approach staff can use in some circumstances to support a victim of hate crime whilst ‘ignoring’ the offender in order to prevent an escalation.

    

    

   The module includes a series of scenarios for staff to complete, based on actual incidents which have occurred on our services. This includes scenarios relating to people with disabilities experiencing hostility. This helps to check staff knowledge and ensure they have the understanding of how to apply what they’ve learnt in a real-life situation.

    

    

   At the heart of the awareness raising module is the principle that staff must never tolerate prejudice and are always expected to act. Staff are told to always follow their training to keep themselves and other people safe, and as a minimum they are expected to call the police if they or another person experiences a hate crime.

    

    

   We have recently adapted the module into a e-learning course, to make the content available across our organisation to all operational and non-operational teams.

    

3. How does your organisation raise awareness of the possibility of hostility and abuse against people with disabilities on public transport services in your area?

    

   The primary method of raising awareness of hate crime is through the monthly hate crime engagement events, as covered in the answer to question one. We also make use of press releases and social media to communicate our aims of tackling hate crime and that we are working to ensure everyone is able to use our services with fear of experiencing hostility. There has been a programme of internal communications work to raise awareness of hate crime and promote a consistent approach across our services. Messages have been sent to all members of staff to promote that hate crime has no place on our services or anywhere else. This message has been also been sent by Transport for London’s Commissioner Mike Brown MVO to highlight the importance with which we take this appalling crime.

    

4. Please send to me your published equality objectives in relation to public transport provision in your area and clarify how you make these objectives accessible to the public.

    

   Action on Equality

    

    

   Our Action on Equality document, which can be found here sets out our commitments to promoting equality for our customers, staff and stakeholders, and our compliance with the Equality Act 2010 for 2016-20. This document also demonstrates how, as a public authority and in accordance with the Equality Act 2010, we work to show due regard and the need to:

    

    

   • Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act

    

    

   • Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

    

    

   • Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

    

    

   We are aiming to address the equality issues we currently face, or expect to face, within the next four years. We identified the important equality issues in London and our organisation using feedback from customers, staff and other stakeholders, as well as research insights and data.

    

    

   Travel in London: Understanding our diverse communities

    

    

   The Equality Act 2010 requires that TfL and other public bodies have due regard for all of London’s communities when developing services.

    

   In this document http://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-understanding-our-diverse-communities.pdf we set out in detail a collection of research that we have undertaken or commissioned to identify the different barriers faced by London’s communities when accessing transport. We also describe travel patterns, the behaviour of different groups, and attitudes towards issues such as fares, personal safety and security and satisfaction with the services we offer. We intend for this to be a source document for TfL, to help staff to fulfil their responsibilities to London’s diverse communities when designing and delivering our services.

    

   A Safety City for All Londoners – Police and Crime Plan 2017-2020

    

   Safety is the highest priority for the Mayor and he believes it is the foundation of London’s success as a great place to live, work, visit and conduct business. The following link outlines The Mayor’s strategy https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mopac_police_and_crime_plan_2017-2021.pdf

    

5. Please send me any progress that you have made toward meeting equality objectives concerning public transport in your area.

    

   Action on Equality – progress report

    

    

   During the past year since publishing our Action on Equality report in March 2016 we have made our network more inclusive and accessible, taking further steps to ensure it is open to all Londoners. The Progress report can be found here

    

6. Please clarify how you incorporate the Public Sector Equality Duty in your provision of public transport including when contracts are agreed with contracting service operators?

The GLA Group Responsible Procurement Policy

For the GLA Group, responsible procurement means pioneering socially, environmentally and economically sustainable procurement to deliver improved quality of life and better value for money. It involves working in partnership across London to provide sustained employment opportunities and improve working conditions. It means opening up access to contract opportunities for London’s diverse businesses, and voluntary and community sector organisations, encouraging improved practices with our suppliers and promoting greater environmental sustainability to make London a better place to live and work.

https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_group_rpp_v7.12_final_template_for_web.pdf

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please feel free to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Melissa Nichols

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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