TRANSEC
From SR
Roles
TRANSEC is the Department for Transport's Transport Security and Contingencies Directorate and its aims are:
- To protect the travelling public, transport facilities and those employed in the transport industries primarily from acts of terrorism and to retain public confidence in transport security, whilst not imposing requirements that impact disproportionately on the travelling public or on the effectiveness and efficiency of industry operations; and
- To co-ordinate the Department for Transport's arrangements for responding to serious disruption of national life, actual or threatened, however caused.
As the transport industries' security regulator, TRANSEC devises and enforces standards taking account both of the costs to the industry of security measures and the consequences of security failures. Responsibility and costs for carrying out security measures rests entirely with the regulated industries. The industries currently regulated are aviation, maritime, railways (including London Underground, DLR and Glasgow Subway) and Channel Tunnel, and, with effect from July 2005, all industries in respect of the security of dangerous goods in transport.
Two fundamental principles are applied:
- Risk Management
- Allows TRANSEC to balance the need for protective security against the cost to the transport network by focusing security measures on those potential targets that are most at risk.
- An evaluation of risk is based on a consideration of the threat of an attack, the vulnerability of a target and the potential consequences of an attack.
- Threat is a measure of the likelihood that terrorists will attack a particular target and is dependent on the terrorists' intent and their capability. The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) and the Security Service provide threat information to TRANSEC (in respect of international and domestic threat respectively).
- The vulnerability of a potential target is dependent on the specific characteristics of the target and the extent to which these could be exploited in an attack. Thus the inherent vulnerability of each mode varies considerably.
- The objective of risk management is to bring the risk to an acceptable level. If the threat to a target is high and the vulnerability is not inherently low, then action must be taken.
- Proportionality and Practicality
- TRANSEC aims to develop measures whose costs are in proportion to the risk, are not unduly burdensome to industry and are practicable. Procedures that are especially intrusive or which cause long delay will not be generally acceptable to the public or industry, unless an exceptional level of threat warrants such an approach temporarily.
Reporting Hierarchy
TRANSEC sits within the Department for Transport but operates independently from the transport policy directorates. The Secretary of State is empowered by legislation to require the regulated transport industries to implement security measures designed to protect their infrastructure, their hardware, staff and the public using it, from attack. The Director of Transport Security and Contingencies (TRANSEC) is authorised to sign Directions obliging the industries to carry out the Government's requirements.
