Interview ANDREW TROTTER
MD’s, really love the railway. I’m a judge on the National Rail Awards and I sit in this office, along with rail journalists and people from the industry, interviewing people about the award they’ve been nominated for, and what comes across is their passion for the business. ‘
Has this rubbed off on him I wonder or colleagues? ‘I do think there’s a genuine interest in the railway, and I find I’m so much more tuned in to the issues, on a personal as well as professional level. When I get invited to the front cab with an MD who wants to show me what their rolling stock can do, the pride and energy and interest they have is quite infectious. I don’t think until I came into this job that I appreciated just how much enthusiasm and passion there is for rail, and you do find yourself getting more interested – if I see something in the newspapers about rail I immediately read it and that would never have happened years ago.’
Network Rail has been incredible as has the policing between the Met and BTP in driving out low-level crime. The sort of thing that people used to walk by and accept as normal I do not accept as normal. It is not normal to have a beggar on a railway station. I’m not anti-beggar but they’re not going to be on a railway station. It’s not normal to have drunks staggering about, or to have baggage thieves or people being bothered. So we have high visibility from us and the PCSO’s (Police Community Support Officers).’
Out and about Trotter makes a point of getting out and about nationally quite a bit. ‘I’m often held in meetings but I do try. I was up in Liverpool the other day, on the Merseyrail network with one of my PC’s, just going about and checking the stations and chatting to staff. I thoroughly enjoy it. It’s good to talk to the PC’s and I really like watching their interaction with rail staff – you can pick up on whether the relationship is right or not – does the PC know about recent incidents? Is he or she greeted by name? And when you’re invited in the office for a chat and they start to talk over something they both know about – you know it’s good. It’s fairly unscientific but I increasingly trust my antennae. ‘Sometimes a rail employee will tell me about something and
I’ll say, ‘did you report that, it sounds horrendous?’ because I want to make sure they feel confident that we want to hear from them. Staff assaults are really important to us and the BTP’s success in dealing with them has improved hugely, because we approach it in the same way the Home Office force might with domestic violence.’
Rail is on-trend
I mentioned that, combined with its innate standing as the object of a plethora of collective emotion both affectionate and hate filled, the rail industry seems to have quite a ‘hip’ image at the moment – being the subject of quite a number of TV programmes has made it a lot sexier. Talking about BBC 2’s The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track,
Trotter was pleased at how the BTP was portrayed. ‘You’re always slightly on edge when you watch your own people on TV, but I think they came across very well, showing their calmness and professionalism under pressure. The rail staff came across especially well I felt. They were great at dealing with some very difficult and anxious people and the human side of the industry came across. My admiration for engineers was confirmed also – watching them at Greyrigg working in foul conditions and just getting on with it. I remember when High Speed One had been built, going to St Pancras and talking to the engineers about the challenges they faced with tunnels, bridges, rivers, canals and power and just thinking ‘wow’.’ Trotter recalls, ‘what really interested me when I came to the BTP was how these very powerful business people, the Toc
May 2013 Page 31
Clear strategic direction I wondered about Trotter’s management style and he immediately turned to the press officer, ‘Jo would say it’s very good and benevolent’ and at that both laughed out loud. ‘I suppose I’ve always been a fairly strong leader, whether of a team or as captain of the rugby club. One learns over time that certain approaches are perhaps not the best way of doing business, and I do like to reflect on things and say ‘well actually maybe I could have done that better’, because when I was younger I always wanted teams that got out there and wanted to do it. And you can encourage and enthuse people like that, but over time I’ve developed slightly different ways of dealing with people than perhaps I would have done many years ago.
‘The BTP is an organisation with some pretty bright people in it, but they usually want a boss who has a clear strategic direction. I’ve put together a team around me, many of whom have far better talents than I, and that’s quite deliberate. I want people who complement but who challenge – I don’t want to be so strong that they feel they can’t influence, but equally I want them to know ‘we’ve had our discussion but that’s the way we’re going to go’. Some are pleased with that and others maybe not but I’m pretty clear about the way I want the organisation to develop and I want enthusiastic energised people who share that vision really.’
Keeping busy Trotter used to play a lot of rugby apparently, but various injuries have put a stop to that. ‘Following my knee operation I’m back on my bike so I go mountain biking and a bit on the road, and I’ve gotten into canoeing of late. I’ve also got six children and seven grandchildren so they occupy my time.’ So how would he feel if they wanted to join? ‘Yeah. I’d be more than happy if they wanted to do that. You always want to protect your children don’t you, you think of the horrors, the dreadful fatalities that I find my staff have to deal with, but I would be much, much, more confident for any of my girls or my boys to join the police now, and much more so now about joining
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