Youth involvement

Youth Panel

We have a Youth Panel to enable young people to have a direct voice within our policy-making process.

The panel is formed of a group of approximately 25 young people who give their views on our programmes and campaigns. The members are aged between 12 and 25 and either live in London or regularly use our transport network. Each member volunteers for a year's term and attends six full panel meetings. We consult them on proposed campaigns with a youth audience and also discuss key initiatives that affect them.

Panel members also champion our campaigns in their communities through presentations, workshops, events and at schools.

Since it was established in 2009, the panel has helped to shape our Single Equality Scheme and Teen Road Safety campaign.

Recently, the panel's meetings have included discussions on concessionary travel, Night Tube, and career opportunities for young people.

The current Chair of the Youth Panel, Harry Rushworth, explains why he became a member:

'I joined the youth panel at the end of 2013 after taking part in the Youth Travel Ambassadors scheme for several years at my school in the London Borough of Havering, where I served as Head Boy.

'I joined the panel as a means of helping to better shape London's transport policy and to act as a voice for young Londoners. My other interests include politics, engineering and architecture. I am currently studying towards a BSc in politics and economics and I am also an apprentice to the Master of the Worshipful Company of Coopers.'

The panel were instrumental in establishing the Youth Travel Ambassadors (YTAs) programme, working with the London Transport Museum and external organisations to create a pupil-led education project aimed at young people aged between 11 and 19 years.

Youth Participation Day

Today, there are an estimated 2.8 million young people living in Greater London, a number which is expected to rise to 3.1 million by 2031. There are over 3,000 schools in the Capital, more than 300 colleges and universities, and a large number of voluntary youth organisations. Giving young people a voice has never been more important.

Our Youth Panel leads and co-ordinates our annual Youth Participation Day at the London Transport Museum, where a wide range of stakeholders come to discuss the future of transport.

This annual event, which began in 2008, sees youth representatives taking part in interactive workshops to address key issues such as safety and security, access to employment and what actions need to be taken to reduce casualties on London's roads.

Youth involvement in our Safer Travel at Night campaign

Our Safer Travel at Night (STaN) initiative aims to raise awareness of the dangers of using unbooked minicabs.

As part of the Safer Travel campaign we work with our Youth Panel and youth stakeholders to increase awareness of personal safety and security for young people. They help us to promote the campaign to their peers through social media and other networks, which amplifies the campaign messages and helps us to reach a wider audience.

We also work with Students' Unions, the NUS and London Universities to help us communicate the STaN campaign messages to students, with a core focus on students who are new to London and not familiar with how to book a minicab.

We run workshops with student officers to brief them on the campaign and discuss how they can best communicate it to their students - for example through university social media channels and stalls at freshers' fairs, where last year we spoke to 50,000 students across London.

Our youth involvement work with the British Youth Council

Following a request from the British Youth Council, we submitted written evidence to the Youth Select Committee.

The Youth Select Committee is an initiative supported by the Department for Education and Parliament's Education Service which enables young people to hold inquiries into issues they care about in order to influence policies and legislation. The committee mirrors the UK Parliament's Select Committee structure, focusing on youth-focused subjects. One of the topics it looks at is how to improve provision of safe, affordable and accessible public transport for young people.

Following our written submission, we gave evidence to the committee of 11 young people. The session as broadcast on BBC Democracy Live. We were asked to address issues put to us by the British Youth Council and the UK Youth Parliament, as well as those that emerged from a poll of 65,000 young people.

The committee noted that we demonstrated significant engagement with young people through our own structures.

The committee's final report made a number of recommendations to the government. Among these, based on the evidence we provided, was the call for every passenger transport executive to have a dedicated forum for young people, following the example of our own Youth Panel.