Corporate Responsibility

As always, safety and security remains at the forefront of everything we do. We are committed to ensuring that our safety record improves across all our operations. We have a robust health and safety policy and controls in place to monitor performance.

In the UK, we are committed to introducing new technology which fosters safety. During the year, we trialled the use of Alcolock units on around 40 vehicles. The unit links a breathalyser to the vehicle immobiliser, preventing the coach being driven if the driver has been drinking alcohol. We now plan to roll out the Alcolock units progressively across the coach fleet. We also trialled a GPS-based system which warns bus drivers if they approach low structures, such as bridges. Following this trial, we intend to fit our double-deck bus fleet in the West Midlands with the system.

During the year, ALSA was the first European operator to fit the new universal seat belt in its vehicles. In the UK, where seat belts are already standard on coaches, we made child booster seats available on every scheduled service.

Across bus and rail we have continued to support initiatives which tackle issues of anti-social behaviour and vandalism. Our involvement with the Safer Travel initiative in the West Midlands, Dundee and Surrey, working with the police and local councils, continues to prove successful in tackling anti-social behaviour. During 2008, we successfully prosecuted nearly 60 people caught smoking on board buses in the West Midlands.

On c2c, we ran a joint initiative with British Transport Police and Network Rail during the school summer holidays to reduce crime, stone throwing and vandalism to trains and stations. Called Operation Shellshock, this involved a special team of four Police Officers travelling on trains working undercover, an unmarked police car and the Network Rail helicopter, equipped with an infra-red camera, supported by a c2c staff hotline to report incidents in real-time to the police. It achieved significant improvements in reducing incidents and delay minutes in the six weeks of last year's school summer holidays compared with 2007.

Climate change is a huge challenge and there are already ambitious targets in place for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in the UK and Spain. This is a great opportunity for our business as we believe use of public transport will need to increase if we are to reduce total emissions from transport. We are not complacent about the need to improve our own efficiency - we have a great track record on this and have targets for making further improvement. However, our greatest contribution is through the net savings that arise when customers choose to use our services instead of the car or plane.

During 2008 we published More is Less - our vision for an integrated transport system by 2020 that is consistent with a carbon constrained world. We are committed to shaping the debate about how we reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport with policy makers. In the medium term we expect our absolute emissions to increase as we aim to increase our operations.

While walking and cycling are the most environmentally sound ways of travelling, they are only practical for a small amount of journeys. Next to these, coaches offer the lowest carbon way to travel, with train and bus close behind. By attracting more people to use our services, instead of the car, there are considerable CO₂ savings.

Public transport plays a critical role in the communities we serve. Our bus, coach and rail services connect people in their daily lives and we never forget how important it is that our services run on schedule and provide value for money, particularly in challenging economic times.

Our services are readily accessible and provide an essential link for those who could be prevented from accessing key services because they do not have use of a car. Many everyday services, such as education, health or retail, are now situated outside of town centres. Transport is essential to access them and people without a car could easily be prevented from using them.

Travelling on public transport also offers benefits over the car. As a passenger, you can use your time more productively, whether you are relaxing or have work to do. It also helps cut congestion on our roads, reducing the need to build and widen roads.

We are working hard to improve the punctuality of our trains, and where delays occur we have improved ways for customers to access real-time information, such as by text message.

At a local level we continue to support initiatives which relate to our business. On the East Coast, we launched the Connectors community engagement programme which brings together young people and our employees to debate and act on issues such as sustainability and the environment. The programme provides teaching resources which encourage debate about sustainability and is building links with schools along the East Coast route.

Investing in our people through appropriate training and development is how we build capability across the business.

During 2008, we brought our UK leadership and development teams together and now have three academies in Birmingham, Stratford and York. Our 'Team Leader' and 'First Level Leaders' programmes continue to develop talent from within the business.

A key challenge during 2008 was to communicate our promise and our values to our people and to reflect these elements in the personal objectives of our management and customer-facing teams. We now have a combined set of management competencies, values and behaviours which are measured and reviewed consistently across the UK.

In Spain, we have introduced innovative ways of delivering training. For the first time, we are delivering training online. This makes training more accessible to a geographically widespread workforce.

In North America, we introduced a centralised recruitment team for all staff and leaders' positions which has helped streamline and standardise processes.