New SES Response Team at Euston Station, London – October 2020 Newsletter

Welcome to the SES Group’s October Newsletter, this month we focus on the work at Euston Station.

Download the PDF version of the Newsletter here

Written by Glen Ball, Account Director – the SES Group

For more information please contact enquiries@thesesgroup.co.uk

The SES Group have recently deployed response teams to work at Euston Station. These teams have been required to deal with a variety of issues, one key issue the teams have been focussed on is providing support to staff working at the station who end up in confrontational situations. While working the response teams have a variety of other responsibilities, they assist with first aid while working with the onsite medical team and assist in removing people from the station.

The response teams are required to complete an end of shift report, which has been created and managed by the SES Group and the overall findings from that report are presented to Euston Station when a review is undertaken.

This newsletter outlines the training the response teams receive, the uniform that is issued, the reporting procedures that are followed and the information that is collated to then be included in the reviews as an example.

Training

The SES Group train all response officers in:

First aid at work
Report writing
Physical intervention and conflict management refresher

These training courses are delivered over three days in the classroom. Once the response officers have completed the classroom courses, they then undertake a station familiarisation. The one day first aid course is part of the overall training package because response officers are likely to be the first people on the scene in the event of an incident. The first aid course gives the response officers the training to provide some medical assistance when called to an incident. (First aid training is not being delivered at the moment due to restrictions caused by COVID19. All response officers will be trained in first aid when safe to deliver a course).

The report writing and conflict management courses are delivered over the remaining two days and are combined to guide the response officers through scenario-based training. The trainers take the response officers through several different scenarios, based on what staff could encounter while working at Euston Station. After the scenario an on the spot debrief is conducted between the trainers and response officers, then the response officers are required to complete their statements in their pocket notebooks. The content of the pocket notebook is evaluated by the trainers based on the incident.

This method of scenario-based learning is used to give the response officer as close to firsthand experience as possible while reinforcing the importance of keeping a good pocket notebook.

The response teams have already undertaken physical intervention and conflict management on their Security Industry Authority (SIA) training, and the refresher is delivered in order to ensure the response officers are aware of the latest techniques.

This part of the training also places a great emphasis on when, and when not, to physically intervene, as well as the importance of documenting why the response officer made the decision they made.

These courses have been specifically chosen in order to meet current client needs and to enable the response teams to provide the best service.

The feedback from the staff who have recently been on this course has been outstanding, one member of staff had been quoted “this is one of the best courses I have ever been on.”

RSAS

The SES Group are working towards becoming a Railway Safety Accreditation Scheme approved company. When the SES Group obtains this accreditation, this additional service will be offered to new and existing clients. The powers that come with the RSAS scheme are being discussed with BTP at the moment and when they have been determined the SES Group will retrain the response teams and begin discussions with clients to ensure that the powers obtained will work in line with our client requirements.

Uniform – Body Armour, Gloves and T-Shirts

All response staff are provided with both long and short sleeve T-Shirts, a set of body armour and a pair of needle
resistant gloves.

The T-Shirts are stitched on both arms, with one arm bearing the SES Group logo and the other arm bearing “Network Rail Response Officer” and the Network Rail logo.

The back of the body armour has “Euston Response Officer” printed on it.

The body armour is stab and needle resistant and videos of the equipment’s capability are available on request. This style of uniform is standard on all Response Officers. When the SES Group obtain their RSAS Accreditation the RSAS logo will be stitched onto the body armour and one of the two ID card pockets will hold the member of staff RSAS card with the other holding their SIA Door Supervisor License.

The needle resistant gloves are provided for staff should they ever need to assist in disposing of anything sharp or are required to look through a bag that may have been left there after applying the HOT protocol.

The gloves are needle resistant to ANSI 5 standard which is the highest level of accreditation that a glove can receive when testing needle resistance capabilities.

Additional Uniform – Body Cameras

In addition to the PPE provided the response officers are also provided with body cameras. These cameras are used when dealing with any kind of incident and the footage is managed by Euston Station because they provide the cameras.

Additional Uniform – Notebooks

To assist in making notes to go along with the body cameras, the response staff are provided with pocket notebooks. The pocket notebooks are serial numbered and assigned to each individual response officer. The pocket notebooks are held centrally and then swapped out upon completion, stamped and archived at the SES Group head office should they ever need to be used for evidence in future incidents or issues.

Procedures

Daily Debrief – The response team are required to submit a daily debrief form which has been customised for Euston Station using a report writing program. This report writing program has been set up to enable Euston Station to receive the reports when they are submitted. The main aim of the form is to capture data. This allows the SES Group to develop new training around the problems that are currently being faced at Euston Station and potentially obtain different RSAS powers in order to deal with the problems as well.

Periodic Review

Periodic or monthly reviews are a key component in allowing the SES Group to deliver a great service. The reviews provide the SES Group with a great opportunity to discuss the current service delivery of the contract and for clients like Euston Station to provide feedback. The information below, including the graphs and explanations is all collated with raw data available at client requests as well as the main incidents that took place during the month or period is also provided.

Some of examples of the information provided in the monthly reports are listed below:

The above information is from data collected between the 15th and 30th of September 2020. The graph indicates the overall percentage of issues dealt with by the response officers working at Euston Station.

Between the 15th and 30th of September an average of 19 people were removed from Euston Station a day with some days being busier than others.

There was a total of 26 anti-social incidents that took place between the 15th and 30th of September. These incidents are then followed up with incident reports and some examples from previous incidents are listed on page 8 and 9 of this document.

Please view our full PDF newsletter here for more information about the periodic review.