Every year our Public Contact staff handle hundreds of thousands of telephone calls, incidents and crimes. They play an essential role in supporting our officers in reducing crime, detecting offenders and minimising disruption on the railway.
Working in the control room is a challenging and often fast-paced environment.
We deal with many different types of incidents and I love that every day is a challenge. Most of our shifts are 12 hours, both days and nights. As Communications Officers, we take emergency phone calls, create incident logs and make outgoing calls to other emergency services, railway staff and members of the public when needed. The other part of our role involves working on radio channels, managing incidents and deploying officers to them while ensuring their safety and that of rail staff and members of the public on the railway network.
During busy periods we can be managing multiple incidents, so we need to be focused and keep up. Incidents can range from fare evasion, abusive passengers and failing to conform at a level crossing through to assaults, individuals at risk of harm and sadly people losing their lives on the railway.
Teamwork, communication, decision-making, dynamic risk assessments and focusing on safety and safeguarding are all central to what we do every day. We have to decide the most effective, efficient and appropriate response to each call for service.
I’ve worked at BTP for over 11 years and enjoy working in a team environment where everyone is multi-skilled and we work together to manage incidents, and while some can be upsetting, we make sure to support each other’s welfare.
Working in the control room offers lots of development opportunities, from being a communications officer to becoming a team manager or tutor, and you gain a great understanding of BTP.
For more information about our roles in Contact Management, click the following link here.
