Depots, stations and yards, UK wide
Transport and Rail Health and Safety
Transport operations put moving vehicles, moving trains and people on foot into the same few metres of ground, usually under a timetable that will not wait. AL23 Safety provides health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering support to rail operators, depot and yard occupiers and passenger transport businesses across the UK.
Why it matters in transport and rail
The risks are real and so are the duties
The Office of Rail and Road is the safety regulator for the railway. Its 2025 to 2026 annual report on health and safety on Britain's railways, published in July 2026, is blunt about where the risk sits. It followed the Elstow collision near Bedford in November 2025, in which a train driver was killed. It identifies overspeeding at junctions as one of the most significant risks on the railway following near miss events on the East Coast Main Line. A cross-industry meeting in December produced progress on joint risk assessment. The regulator's view is that there is much more to do.
The same report names four other themes. A track worker fatality at Radlett in March has prompted targeted ORR inspections into how Network Rail and its contractors manage risk during track work. Welfare provision has improved unevenly despite an industry commitment. Level crossing fatalities are rising and violence against railway staff is escalating. Network Rail's financial constraints are deferring maintenance and renewals. The overarching message is that Great British Railways reform must not weaken safety standards.
This page covers rail, depots, yards and passenger transport. If your operation is road freight and distribution, our logistics health and safety page is the better starting point and this one adds the rail and passenger specialism on top of it.
The main risks
Where the harm comes from
Track and lineside work
Access, safe systems of work, protection arrangements and the Network Rail and contractor interface, which is where ORR is now targeting inspection.
Vehicle and pedestrian interface in depots and yards
Shunting movements, road-rail plant, delivery vehicles and staff walking routes crossing in the same space, often at night and in poor light.
Loading and unloading
Trailer run-away during loading, dock leveller and edge risk, curtain-sider instability, load securing failures and tail lift injuries.
Falls from vehicles and rolling stock
Access to trailer beds, tanker tops, wagon roofs and vehicle bodies, which produces serious head and spinal injuries at heights people underestimate.
Fatigue and driver welfare
Shift patterns, night working and long turns degrade judgement while visiting drivers are still routinely denied the toilet and washing facilities they are entitled to.
Violence, aggression and crowding
Frontline staff at stations and on services face rising abuse while platform crowding turns an ordinary delay into a crush risk.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 apply across the whole operation. For the railway itself, the Railways and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations 2006 as amended, usually called ROGS, sit alongside the Railways Act 2005 and are enforced by the Office of Rail and Road. ORR published a post-implementation review of ROGS in 2026. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch investigates accidents independently of the regulator and RSSB owns the Rule Book and the railway group standards that the industry works to day to day. On the depot and yard side HSE is the enforcing authority, applying the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 to the site, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 and the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 to plant and lifting, plus ACOP L117 to rider-operated lift trucks. HSG76 covers warehousing and HSG136 covers workplace transport.
Fatigue and the gap the law leaves
No single regulation sets a maximum shift length for safety purposes. Fatigue is managed through the general duty in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the risk assessment duty in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, with rail adding the industry rules in the RSSB Rule Book and railway group standards. Working time and drivers' hours law runs in parallel and answers a different question. Compliance with hours rules is not evidence that a roster is safe.
Fire safety in transport and rail
Transient populations, long escape routes and a crowd that does not know the building
Stations, interchanges and depots are difficult fire safety environments because almost nobody in them knows the layout. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies and requires a fire risk assessment. Since section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 commenced on 1 October 2023, every responsible person must record the fire risk assessment in full whatever the size of the premises, record the fire safety arrangements, record their own name and UK address and identify anyone engaged to carry out the assessment. Penalties for certain offences rose from level 3 to level 5, an unlimited fine. Where several organisations occupy the same station, the duty to identify and co-operate with other responsible persons is the one most often ignored and the easiest for an inspecting officer to test.
Platform and concourse fire strategy has to cope with crowding, with retail concessions inside the escape route, with service risers running under platforms and with evacuation competing against an incoming service. Our fire engineering team models those conditions rather than assuming a clean building. Terrorism is the other planning driver. Transport hubs are named in Schedule 1 of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. Most significant stations will fall in the standard tier at 200 to 799 people or the enhanced tier at 800 and above. The statutory guidance was laid on 15 April 2026 and the substantive duties do not bite until at least 24 months after Royal Assent on 3 April 2025. This is planning work rather than an immediate compliance failure. Our Martyn's Law compliance support brings the evacuation, invacuation and lockdown procedures into the same document set as the fire evacuation plan instead of running them separately.
How we help
Built around your operation
We start where the movements happen. That means the depot at shift change, the platform at the evening peak and the risk assessment read against what people actually do.
- Depot and yard transport reviews against HSG136, covering segregation, reversing, shunting, road-rail plant interface and lighting, through a full workplace transport review where the layout drives the risk.
- Loading bay and dock assessments covering trailer restraint and key control, dock levellers, edge protection, curtain-sider stability and load securing.
- Lift truck and lifting equipment compliance under L117 and LOLER, with thorough examination at 12 months for load lifting and 6 months for anything lifting people or for accessories.
- Work at height reviews for access to trailers, tanker tops and rolling stock, applying collective protection before harnesses.
- Driver welfare arrangements, including toilet and washing facilities for visiting drivers, which HSE treats as a live expectation and not a courtesy.
- Fire risk assessments and fire strategy for stations, depots, workshops and interchanges, including compartmentation and evacuation for mixed occupancy sites.
Why AL23 Safety
Sector-aware support that gets used
Accountable
If your depot segregation disappears the moment a delivery arrives out of hours, the report says so. We assess the site under operational pressure, not during a quiet visit arranged for our benefit.
Practical, not just compliant
We write procedures that a shunter or a station supervisor can follow at two in the morning. A control that only works in daylight with full staffing is not a control.
One team, three disciplines
Health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering in-house. Station crowding, escape route capacity and counter terrorism planning get looked at together rather than by three separate suppliers.
Nationwide
We support transport and rail operators across the UK, from single depots to multi-site station and passenger networks.
Get in touch
Tell us what moves and where the people are
Send us the site type, the movements it handles and any regulator correspondence. We will tell you where the exposure is concentrated and what an assessment would cover.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usIt depends on the activity. ORR is the safety regulator for the railway under ROGS, the Railways Act 2005 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. HSE regulates most depot, yard and workshop activity that is not railway operation. Many sites have both. The boundary between the operational railway and the road going yard needs to be defined on paper before an incident forces the question.
Yes. HSE treats the provision of toilet and washing facilities to drivers making deliveries as a duty on the site operator, not a favour. It is a recurring complaint source and a straightforward finding for an inspector to make. The practical fix is a welfare route that does not cross a live vehicle route.
Not yet in terms of enforceable duties. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025 and statutory guidance was laid on 15 April 2026, with at least 24 months from Royal Assent before the substantive duties take effect. Transport hubs are in Schedule 1. The sensible position is to establish your tier now based on capacity and build the procedures during the lead in.
A single depot usually needs a full day on site plus reporting, timed to catch a peak movement period. A station with mixed occupancy takes longer because the fire risk assessment has to address other responsible persons. Cost follows site count, complexity and whether fire work runs alongside the occupational review. Our Core retainer starts at £250 per month.
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