What would be reassuring and effective is patrols of BTP officers on major train routes, particularly during the evenings. I use the major routes in and out of London to both the north ans south on a regular basis. I never see BTP officers on the trains and very rarely at stations outside of London. Start with visibility and the basics of a preventative and reassurance policing model.

As to the APP, I do have some concerns that the focus on women and girls being subject to attack is perhaps lacking in perspective and proportion and is a bit of a kneejerk reaction to the sickening murder of Sarah Everard, my view is that everyone is vulnerable to attack irrespective of gender, not least the elderly and disabled - are they to have a special APP too?

Not sure you've thought this through. The track mileage of the rail network is a little under 10,000 miles with 3000 stations. Police officer strength of around 3000 officers with 230 PCSO's. If you put a police officer on a train in London and it runs non stop to Birmingham you confine that officer and thus their response availabilty. Noting that they'd have to do a return jouney with the same consequence and that is likely to be a whole shift gone. By comparison how often do you see an officer on foot patrol in your local town?Neither is viable in terms of response to demand. Sadly preventive policing has been on the back burner for so long it has burnt dry.

@Softly Softly. What a defeatist attitude. With 3000 officers there is clearly the capacity to deliver high visibility deterrent patrols on some main lines. BTP have vehicles so officers on the trains could be picked without the need to complete the full route. There needs to be a desire to make things work, not weak excuses why they cannot be tried.

@Anon Certainly not defeatist - just a realist, as you may appreciate not all 3000 are uniformed officers nor of course are they all on duty at the same time and BTP covers, England, Scotland and Wales. The reality is that the MPS and County Forces have extreme difficulty providing any where near an acceptable level of response.

Definitely. Especially when you consider there are tens of millions of women in the UK who’ll no doubt have millions of interactions with men every year who never come to harm, let alone murdered, the knee jerk reaction is just beyond insane

NEVER see them on main london stations NEVER mind on trains , see more of these travel safe than officers .