Balfour Beatty highlights the rise in roadworker abuse on ITV

Balfour Beatty has featured on both ITV South and ITV Yorkshire as part of a national news story highlighting the rise in roadworker abuse, detailing the experiences of its workforce on the road network.

Marc Woodall, Contract Director at Balfour Beatty, spoke about a recent incident: "Only in the last week in East Sussex, we had an incident where we had a road closure in place. A member of the public was frustrated and wanted to get through. When our staff refused, that individual pulled a knife and physically and verbally threatened them."

ITV Yorkshire also featured Balfour Beatty’s Section Engineer on the A63 project, Amit Soorajbally. Speaking of his experience, Amit said: “We have experienced verbal abuse and threats. In one instance, a member of public started punching and kicking our equipment and threatening our staff on site. This was very scary and it becomes difficult to work under these conditions.”

Balfour Beatty has put in place a number of measures to protect those at risk of roadworker abuse, including the roll-out of body cameras as well as increased mobile CCTV to accurately capture and record incidents.  To watch the ITV South coverage, click here, and to watch the ITV Yorkshire piece, click here.