Assaults on trains on Britain’s Railways Hit Record 25,000 a Year as Transport Police Ranks Shrink

Assaults on trains across Great Britain have climbed to their highest level on record, with official figures showing almost 25,000 incidents reported in a single year — a jump of a fifth that has left rail staff and passengers increasingly fearful of using the network they rely on every day.

The numbers, released by the Office of Rail and Road, cover a wide spectrum of behaviour: threats, verbal abuse, spitting, head-butting and sexual harassment, alongside incidents that caused no physical injury at all. But buried within the total is a harder number that unions say should alarm anyone who boards a train or works on one — nearly 2,500 physical assaults on staff, or roughly seven every single day.

For those on the front line, the statistics simply confirm what they already feel in their bones. At Exeter St Davids station last week, when a train was halted unexpectedly, staff immediately assumed the worst. “Someone will have kicked off,” one worker said. “It happens all the time. My boss got head-butted recently.” On this occasion they were wrong. But the fact that violence was their first guess speaks volumes about daily life on the railway.

Why assaults on trains keep climbing

Rail unions, including the RMT and TSSA, say the surge is horrifying but far from surprising. They point to a steady hollowing-out of policing on the network: the number of British Transport Police officers fell by more than 10% between 2024 and 2026, even as passenger numbers and reported incidents have gone in the opposite direction. Fewer staffed stations and a thinner police presence, they argue, have left both workers and travellers more exposed.

Many staff now wear body cameras simply to document what happens to them on shift. “I think it’s so sad that we have those,” said one rail worker in south-west England who has spent two decades on the job. “The threats, the abuse, the violence we see is off the scale.” He pointed to drink, drugs and untreated mental health crises as recurring factors. “If you’re out on the street you can steer clear, but if you’re on a train or a platform you can’t. Our workplaces are becoming more and more dangerous.”

Others describe a job that has changed fundamentally since the pandemic. One guard in the north of England recalled being punched in the head by a passenger during his last service of the night: “I’ve had to look away to see the door controls and the next thing I know, I’m waking up on the platform.” He said verbal abuse is now a daily occurrence for every guard he knows. “Now it’s mostly bad days, and you’re searching for good days, where nothing’s said, or nothing happens. The amount of times we’re getting threatened now with physical attacks, even when you walk through the train and say, ‘Tickets, please.’”

It isn’t only uniformed conductors and guards who bear the brunt. Contractors working trackside say they too have become targets, even though their jobs have nothing to do with delays or cancellations. “We sometimes get sworn at and even spat at,” said one contractor based in Somerset. “It’s just a minority, but somehow they think we’re responsible for slow journey times, cancelled trains. We’re in bright orange so we’re easy targets.”

A wider pattern across public transport

The spike in assaults on trains mirrors a broader deterioration across public transport. Bus drivers have reported repeated abuse and threats, prompting the Unite union to sound similar alarms. In London, Transport for London staff working on the roads are now issued with “spit kits” — forensic saliva collection tubes — because that form of assault has become so routine that evidence-gathering has had to be built into the job.

Violence against women and girls on public transport is drawing particular attention from policymakers. Speaking at the Labour party conference this week, the minister for buses and local transport, Simon Lightwood, described the problem as a “national emergency.” The mayor for the north-east, Kim McGuinness, said that beyond practical measures such as better lighting, more staffing and expanded CCTV, women need confidence that reporting an incident will actually lead to action. “Knowing that if you raise an alarm something is going to be done,” she said, is essential. “It’s a choice to use public transport or not … if you’re accepting 50% of the population don’t feel safe, that’s not good.”

For an industry still working to win back passengers and revenue lost since the pandemic, the economic stakes of this crisis are significant. A railway perceived as unsafe — for staff or travellers — risks further eroding ridership and straining recruitment at a time when operators are already battling cost pressures and public scrutiny over reliability. Unions argue that restoring staffed stations, rebuilding transport police numbers and investing in visible deterrents are not just safety measures but a financial imperative for a network that depends on public trust.

With reported assaults on trains now at a record high and the underlying causes — thinning police numbers, untreated mental health and addiction issues, and a culture of abuse normalised since the pandemic — showing no sign of easing, rail staff say they simply want to feel safe doing an ordinary day’s work. As one guard put it, success now looks less like job satisfaction and more like survival: a shift where, for once, “nothing’s said, or nothing happens.”

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