We welcomed three guests at our November club meeting. They were Cllr Martin Round, Mayor of Maidstone, Adam Downing, Southeastern Rail Safeguarding and Regional President Roxanne St Clair.
Janet Hughes introduced Adam from the new Southeastern Rail Safeguarding unit. Adam gave an excellent presentation about the work of the Safeguarding team.
- A dedicated team based in Ashford.
- 24 officers dedicated to preventing anti-social behaviour.
- 90 rail Enforcement Officer across the network.
A large part of their work is suicide prevention. They have a Youth Safeguarding Officer. Adam attends Community Safety Partnership meetings with other agencies. To work towards a joined-up approach. BTP, Network Rail and SE Rail have an agreement for collaborative working.
In support of the 16 Days of Activism, Southeastern Rail are working with Kent Domestic Abuse Partnership. on targeted initiatives at hotspot locations across Kent to better support people fleeing domestic abuse.
Medway and Maidstone members are hoping to explore with Adam opportunities to work together in the future on Women and rail safety issues.
It was particularly pleasing the Mayor of Maidstone could hear about the work taking place on Rail Safety.
President Roxanne was pleased to hear that Southern Railways are making passenger safety a priority. Roxanne has reached out to Lindsay Green to find out how she would like us to proceed in line with the SIGBI safety project, and we just need to feed back to the working group.
As Medway and Maidstone are already planning on working with the team at SER, Roxanne will focus her discussions with Adam on what they would like from us as a region to see what we can do.
President Roxanne presented Wanda Wright with her long service certificate for her 25 years of service to Soroptimism in Medway and Maidstone.
It was a very full, informative and interesting meeting enjoyed by all in attendance.