About the PTS Qualification & Assessment

About the PTS Qualification & Assessment

Personal Track Safety (PTS) is the entry-level track safety competence for Network Rail managed infrastructure. Network Rail's Guide to your Personal Track Safety (RT3170, Issue 11, 2024) says PTS is required by people who need to go on or near the line (within 3 metres of a line) or carry out engineering or technical work on a platform within 1.25 metres of its edge. Training providers describe it as the competence anyone joining the industry needs before they can access the track environment.

PTS is designed to keep you safe. It does not by itself qualify you to protect other people: with PTS alone you work under the control of a COSS, and you must never work alone unless you are a COSS or an individual working alone (IWA).

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The Three Parts of PTS

Initial courses commonly combine the core with the AC and DCCR modules over two days, preceded by online pre-learning.

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Before the Course

Training providers set out the prerequisites, which follow the Sentinel Scheme Rules and Network Rail standards:

• A Primary Sponsor and a Sentinel profile: your sponsor must create your Sentinel profile and make sure your medical and drugs and alcohol records are valid and uploaded. Only sponsors approved at "trackside" level can sponsor people to hold PTS (Sentinel Scheme Rules 5.1.3).
• Medical fitness to Network Rail standard NR/L2/OHS/00124.
• Drugs and alcohol: a negative Network Rail drugs and alcohol test carried out no more than three months before an initial PTS course, uploaded to your Sentinel profile.
• English and identity: you must be able to read and communicate effectively in English, and bring photo identification such as a passport or driving licence. The Sentinel Scheme Rules require enough English to understand instructions, challenge when appropriate and make an emergency phone call.
• E-learning: you must pass the PTS pre-learning training and assessment online through Network Rail's e-learning website before the course, and bring the completion certificate.
• PPE for the practical session: approved lace-up safety boots, orange high-visibility upper and lower clothing, a helmet, eye protection and gloves.

Some providers set a minimum age for their courses (for example 18), so check with your provider.

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The Course and the Assessment

The course aims to make you able to correctly interpret the Rule Book (or the PTS handbook) and relevant instructions when going on or near the line, and to follow a safe system of work. Provider course profiles list the key topics as getting to know the infrastructure, going on to the railway, walking or working, communication skills, emergency situations, AC electrification equipment, DCCR electrification equipment and a track visit.

Assessment is by theory and practical/verbal assessment, after the online pre-learning assessment. Network Rail and its providers do not publish a single national question count or pass mark for the PTS assessment, so prepare to understand and apply the rules rather than to memorise a fixed question paper.

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Validity, Recertification and Practice

• A PTS competence is valid for two years. Provider course profiles state that once it has expired there is an 8-week grace period in which you can still attend a PTS recertification course instead of repeating the initial course. Recertification is normally a one-day course.
• Network Rail's competence standard NR/L2/CTM/021, Competence and training in track safety, was reissued as Issue 5 with a compliance date of 6 December 2025. Training providers' summaries of that issue explain that, to attend a PTS recertification, you must show 8 practice requirements (uses of the competence) in the previous 24 months, with 4 of them in the previous 12 months.
• From 6 December 2025, practice must be recorded as Sentinel Log Book records; paper logbook entries are only accepted if they are dated before that date. Use of a competence that is built on PTS, such as site warden, also counts as using PTS.
• The same summaries give a mentoring period of six months for newly qualified PTS holders, during which the green square shows on your Sentinel record and you wear a blue helmet (chapter 2).
• Sentinel Scheme Rules 3.4.3 and 3.4.4 require you to carry your card and be swiped in before you work, and swipe-ins and log book records are how your practice is evidenced, so make sure you are swiped in every shift.

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Your Handbooks

Your Primary Sponsor must give you the handbooks and briefings you need at no cost (Sentinel Scheme Rules 3.2.3 and Appendix B). For PTS the key documents are:

The Rule Book is updated in regular cycles: for example, HB1 Issue 9 was published in September 2025 and came into force in December 2025, and HB16 Issue 7 was published in March 2026 and came into force in June 2026. Each change is summarised in the Rule Book Briefing Leaflet, and your sponsor must brief you on changes. Always work to the issue that is in force on the day.

The Sentinel Scheme Rules also refer to the rail industry Lifesaving Rules, which the rules define as rules developed by the rail industry to address the main causes of death and serious injury. Infringing them is listed as a breach of the Sentinel Scheme Rules, so make sure your sponsor has briefed you on the current version.