Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
Britain's rail workers faced about seven physical assaults a day last year
Office of Rail and Road figures show nearly 2,500 physical assaults on rail workers in 2025-26, inside a record total of almost 25,000 reported incidents. For operators, the question now is how much of the response has to come out of their own staffing and security budgets.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- The record count covers threats, verbal abuse and contact that may not have caused injury, alongside physical attacks on staff.
- The rail industry and police say part of last year's 36% rise in recorded assaults on passengers comes from greater reporting, including discreet text messages to BTP.
- Many rail staff now wear body cams to record and log incidents of violence against them.
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Why it matters
- cost Guards and platform staff carry the cost first, and at the current rate an operator has to plan every late-shift roster on the assumption that someone will be attacked.
- contradiction The industry credits part of the rise to better reporting, so an argument resting on the year-on-year increase is open to challenge in a way that one resting on the absolute level is not.
- decision With fewer transport police officers available, operators have to decide whether to pay for staffed stations and on-site security themselves or accept slower responses to incidents.
- constraint Body cams and spit kits collect evidence after an attack. They cannot give the assurance McGuinness described, that someone will act when an alarm is raised.
About one incident in ten on the Office of Rail and Road's 2025-26 count was a physical assault on a worker: nearly 2,500 out of almost 25,000 [15]. A rise of a fifth to that total implies roughly 20,800 reported incidents the year before. That is about 4,200 more logged in twelve months [16].
The rail industry and the police have a reasonable answer to the size of the rise. They say some of the 36% increase in recorded assaults on passengers comes from greater reporting, including discreet text messages to British Transport Police [14]. That explanation bears on how fast violence is growing, and much less on how much of it there is now. The figures as reported do not give a separate year-on-year change for physical assaults on staff, and they do not link any change to police numbers [1][3].
The staff accounts describe a standing condition. Steve, a guard in the north of England, was punched in the head by a passenger on his last train of the night [10]. He said he looked away to see the door controls "and the next thing I know, I'm waking up on the platform" [10]. "Now it's mostly bad days, and you're searching for good days, where nothing's said, or nothing happens," he said [11]. A rail worker in south-west England, identified only as Dave, said: "If you're out on the street you can steer clear, but if you're on a train or a platform you can't" [9].
Much of the kit already in use records violence once it has happened. Many rail staff wear body cams to record and log incidents [6]. Transport for London issues staff working on roads with "spit kits", forensic saliva collection tubes [12]. "I think it's so sad that we have those," Dave said of the cameras [7]. After 20 years in the job, he said: "The threats, the abuse, the violence we see is off the scale" [8].
For operators, the trade-off is between equipment that documents an assault and people who can respond to one. The RMT and TSSA unions have campaigned for more staffed stations and more policing [5]. Over the same stretch, British Transport Police officer numbers fell by more than 10% [4]. Kim McGuinness, the mayor for the north-east, was speaking about women's safety. She listed more staffing, lighting and CCTV, and said a crucial point was "knowing that if you raise an alarm something is going to be done" [13].
I think the order of decisions is where operators can go wrong. Cameras bought this quarter are likely to add incidents to next year's log. The reporting explanation now offered for passenger assaults would then apply to staff counts too [14]. If the 2026-27 figure rises, it will be hard to tell whether that reflects more violence or better recording. Staffing budgets set against it would have to rest on the level alone. That level is already about seven physical assaults on workers a day [3].
What to watch
- Whether the Office of Rail and Road's next annual release separates the trend in physical assaults on staff from changes in how incidents are reported.
- Any reversal or further fall in British Transport Police officer numbers after the drop of more than 10% between 2024 and 2026.
- Whether operators answer the RMT and TSSA campaign with firm commitments on staffed stations.