A conversation with Stuart Browning: shaping the future of rail safety
The chair of PTSRG talks to Horizon about the challenges and opportunities facing the industry.
Stuart Browning is the Safety, Sustainability, and Compliance Director at c2c. He’s also Chair of the People on Trains and in Stations Risk Group (PTRSG). We asked Stuart to tell us about PTSRG and its work.
Thank you for talking with Horizon magazine. Can you tell us a bit about your career and your role as Safety, Sustainability, and Compliance Director at c2c?
I’m a fourth-generation worker in rail. My dad, both my granddads, my great-granddad, and all my uncles worked in rail. They were all building trains in the works at Swindon when that was still operating. So, it feels like I’m continuing the legacy of the family.
I joined the industry in 2002, working for Railtrack doing delay attribution for the Western route. I was the Route Freight Manager, Six Sigma Black Belt, then I was the Thames Valley Performance Improvement Manager, before moving to Network Rail in Wessex. We were the one of the first routes to go through devolution. When it happened, I had the privilege of being the very first Route Safety Improvement Manager at Network Rail. I had free rein to look at safety and how we improve it. I spent time looking into other industries—oil, gas, and mining—to learn about how they manage safety. I then led part of a national safety programme called Planning and Delivering Safe Work before becoming the Joint Head of Performance for Network Rail, Western, and Great Western Railway. I then joined GWR as the Head of Operations Interface, supporting the introduction of the class 800 fleet and Great Western Mainline electrification programme. On the day lockdown hit in 2020, I joined Thameslink & Great Northern as the Head of Operations Improvement, managing our response to the pandemic.
I joined c2c in spring 2023 and was appointed as the Director of Safety, Sustainability, and Compliance later that year. I’ve been in that role ever since. I look after the safety team and all the environmental sustainability aspects, and we’ve just started building a compliance team. We’re making sure that we’ve got the right framework for the business to succeed in safety, finance, management, and compliance.
It’s been a fascinating career for me personally and full of opportunity. PTSRG is the next stage of that opportunity, and I’m privileged to take this role.
Can you give us an overview of PTSRG’s work?
PTSRG is a cross-industry specialist group established by RSSB. Its task is to lead and facilitate collaborative activities on risk specific to the workforce, passengers, and public at stations, on platforms, and on-board trains. The scope of PTSRG looks across the GB railway network and includes addressing risks associated with slips, trips, and falls, the platform-train interface (PTI), and on-board injuries. We also address issues with contact with objects in stations and the flow of people through stations—and, to a degree, assault, abuse, and antisocial behaviour, including how we design our station processes to avoid it.
Our key aim is to enhance passenger safety and reduce harm. We do that through leveraging data analysis, identifying root causes, and then implementing effective improvements to help influence customer behaviour. We make sure we’re sharing good practice for colleague training and the processes and equipment they use. We’re thinking about design, PTI particularly, level boarding, and moving people from one part of their journey to the next. We’re working on developing and implementing action plans within each group to meet the current and future needs of the industry.
What are some key challenges that PTSRG is addressing?
One of the key challenges comes off the back of the pandemic. There was a real shift in behaviour on the railway during that time. We were actively encouraging people to stay away from each other—to not interact. That was all driven by legislation around social distance but also fear of disease. It really drove people apart. That’s had a negative impact on social etiquette on trains and in stations. Sometimes, poor behaviours are allowed to manifest unchallenged, and passengers are not self-managing their behaviour as before. I’ve been commuting most of my career, and I really see the difference. If people’s behaviours were crossing a line, other passengers would step in. That happens less now. One of the real challenges is trying to change that culture back and change those behaviours. That that’s a big part of what we do at PTSRG.
We use SMIS data to better understand some of the new and emerging risks, like sitting on the platform edge and retrieval of items from the track. We want to understand what’s driving those new risk events and what can we do to try to reduce them.
Looking ahead, what do you see as the long-term priorities for the rail industry?
In 2025, we’ll be celebrating 200 years of the rail industry. That’s a real achievement. I think about my own family—their history goes back through a good part of that time. We have a duty to provide a means of connecting people and moving freight across the UK and the rest of the world for the next 200 years, too. We have a duty to make sure it can continue in a sustainable way. I’d love it if, four generations down the line from me, there’s somebody saying, ‘I’m the eighth generation, and we’re still running trains.’
At c2c, we’ve had that in mind planning our strategy for the next 10 years. We’ve created a strategy called Net Zero. It’s about making sure that we can operate c2c in a sustainable manner—by not taking subsidy from government, by making sure we reduce our impact on the environment, and by making sure that we’re fundamentally linked to the communities that we serve. For me, that’s what the railway is all about.
What’s the most important thing that other rail leaders should know about PTSRG?
I want my colleagues in industry to know that we’re here, we’re well organised, and we’re passionate about delivering improvement for the industry. I became the Deputy Chair under Jenny Saunders. Jenny did incredible work with PTSRG, organising the group and getting people engaged. I see it as my duty to continue that.
We sometimes struggle with engagement because people find it difficult to see where the return comes from. In a cost-constrained world, return on investment is a really important factor. The more industry engages with groups like PTSRG and other risk and working groups in the RSSB structure, the better that return will be for everybody.
I would encourage railway leaders to use their engagement with the RSSB risk groups as an opportunity to really develop teams to motivate their people and to get them involved in delivering transformational change. Involvement in this is a great opportunity to have a common purpose with people facing similar challenges in other train operators, infrastructure providers like Network Rail, or contractors. Seeing the problem through somebody else’s eyes can give you better insight into your own management of those issues.
Engaging with what RSSB provides through these risk groups is a real opportunity to do good stuff.
Finally, what do you think is an unsung strength of our country’s rail system?
It’s how effectively our colleagues across the industry work well together. We’re going through a challenging time in the industry—a time of change and financial constraints. But it’s the fact that the people who work in our industry already have a culture where they’ll freely come together and do good things regardless of the badge they’re wearing. I think we all work for the railway first and the brand second. The industry has had 200 years of building that culture up. When challenges happen, time and again, the industry shows how well it can come together and deal with them.
I reflect on the Dawlish sea wall collapse 10 years ago. It cut off the West of England from a railway perspective. But the industry came together and did what it needed to in order to get it back up and running.
We should absolutely continue to invest time, effort, and energy in that cross-industry collaboration. The RSSB risk groups are a great forum for doing just that.
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