WIREDGOV

We are working in partnership with the British Transport Police (BTP), City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) on Project Guardian - an initiative to drive out unwelcome sexual behaviour on the network.

The project aims to demonstrate to our passengers that any form of harassment, including unwanted touching, sexual comments or exposure, is unacceptable and assures them that we will take all reported sexual offences seriously. We are encouraging passengers to report harassment to the police, which will help us to target offenders and reduce the risk of passengers becoming a victim.

All 2,500 TfL-funded MPS Safer Transport Command (STC) and BTP police officers have recently taken part in Project Guardian workshops where they learnt the impact of sexual harassment on victims and how to identify offenders based on behaviour traits.

The transport network is a safe, low-crime environment with the risk of becoming a victim of crime while travelling on our transport system at its lowest level. However, our safety and security survey showed 15 per cent of female passengers have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour on the network in the past 12 months. With 90 per cent of victims not reporting incidents to the police, as many believed it wasn't serious enough.

Through Project Guardian we alongside our policing partners hope to bring down those unreported figures by encouraging passengers to report all incidents no matter how small they are.