Frequently asked questions

General enquiries:
Call: 0203 142 5369
Email: enquiries@ciras.org.uk

To raise a concern:
Use our online reporting form
Use the CIRAS reporting app, from App Store or Google Play
Report hotline UK: 0800 4 101 101
Report hotline ROI: 1800 239 239
Freepost CIRAS (UK only)

Full contact details

CIRAS is the confidential safety hotline for transport. We handle the identity of reporters, and any other individuals involved in a concern, confidentially.

Confidentiality is not the same as anonymity. With anonymous reporting, no one knows the identity of the person reporting a concern. If you report something anonymously, there is no way for anyone to get back to you to tell you what happened with your report – you may never find out. With confidential reporting, you share your details but they are protected – and in the case of CIRAS, only the CIRAS analyst you speak to will know who you are. This means they can let you know how the company responded – and you will see what’s happened because your concerns were heard.

More about how confidential reporting differs from anonymous reporting and whistleblowing, and how we protect your confidentiality.

CIRAS is the independent, not-for-profit confidential safety hotline for transport. We are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB).

We help our member companies to hear from anyone across transport. We listen to health, safety and wellbeing concerns that might otherwise stay hidden. We protect the reporter’s identity when we share their concerns with the relevant company so that the right people can act to reduce risk.

Our member community shares good practice and learning, working together to build a culture of listening.

We have almost 2,000 member companies.

CIRAS membership is open to any transport-related organisation where management of the safety, health and wellbeing of staff, customers and the public is important. We listen to concerns from across transport, infrastructure and the transport supply chain, including bus, mainline rail, light rail, tram, urban metros, highways and ports.

When you join CIRAS, you are providing your employees with a choice of how to share their health, safety and wellbeing concerns. This means they are less likely to stay silent, and you are more likely to hear vital safety intelligence you might otherwise have missed. 

Being able to raise concerns confidentially can encourage people who aren’t comfortable using internal channels to come forward, so you hear from a greater variety of voices in your business. As a CIRAS member, you’ll be able to hear from others working on or visiting your sites, such as clients and contractors. CIRAS offers your employees a way to share concerns with other companies too.

CIRAS can help you reduce risk and, by helping you avoid expensive incidents, strengthen your business performance. By showing your employees that you are willing to make it easy for them to raise concerns, you are also improving your safety culture, driving employee engagement, and offering them (and you) peace of mind.

If you are ready to join now, you can find our membership application form and instructions on what to do next on our Join page.

If you want to talk to us first, please call us on 0203 142 5369 or email enquiries@ciras.org.uk and we will be in touch.

Membership is annual and runs from 1 April to 31 March every year. See Managing your membership for full details of how this works, including our membership renewal timeline.

The cost of membership will depend on your turnover. CIRAS operates nine levy bands which relate to the turnover of the parts of your business which will be covered by the membership – this could be some or all of your transport operations. Once we know this information, we can advise you what your annual levy will be.

See Your levy explained for more information on why we use this approach.

If you are a CIRAS member, you can find your certificate in your MyCIRAS area of the website. You can access this from the top right of the website once you are logged in.

If you have any issues, please contact our enquiries line or your CIRAS stakeholder manager.

How to register to the website

Yes. CIRAS provides a confidential health and safety reporting service that fulfils all the criteria stipulated in the Sentinel scheme rules (see Appendix B of the Sentinel scheme rules).

We issue invoices to new members within three working days upon completion of the application form.

Welcome packs including your certificate are emailed within three working days of receiving payment.

We use any personal details you provide when raising a concern so that we can talk to you about your concern, and then stay in touch to share the response and get your feedback. CIRAS is a strictly confidential reporting service, and any personal information provided by reporters is kept on our secure database. Six months after your case is closed, these details are electronically 'shredded'. See our privacy notice for more details.

We do not investigate concerns ourselves. We listen to you when you raise your concern with us and protect your identity when we share it with the relevant company. The company then investigates and acts. We share the company's response to the CIRAS report with you, so that you know you’ve been heard.

If you work for a CIRAS member organisation, you can call us with any health, wellbeing or safety concern. Maybe you don’t feel able to raise internally, or you’ve tried without success. Maybe you can’t raise your concern any other way because it’s for another company.

Visit our Raise a concern page to see what you can report and what happens when you do. If you want to report something today, you can fill out our online form or use the other ways to contact us shown on that page.

We always let the person who raised a concern know what the company has done in response. If you are still concerned, we share that feedback, and facilitate a confidential exchange between you and the company to ensure that no opportunity to reduce risk has been missed. We have developed a series of tools to support organisations in responding to CIRAS reports.