A police unit that investigates sexual assaults on the Tube and trains is to be scrapped, a decision labelled as “disturbing” by women’s equality campaigners.

British Transport Police (BTP) this week announced it would be disbanding the unit, which had officers who actively searched for offenders on the transport network.

The unit is being axed as part of a structural review by the BTP, which will also see the team handling assaults against Transport for London staff scrapped.

Under the new operating model, sexual offences will be investigated by the 269 officers dedicated to crime nationally.

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It comes at a time when reports of sexual offences and rape are increasing.

BTP recorded 1,399 sexual offences in 2014/15, up 282 on the previous year Across London, reports of rape have risen from 4,986 to 5,427 in the last two years and sexual offences have increased from 9,215 to 10,477, according to Metropolitan Police figures.

Earlier this month a YouGov survey revealed 85 per cent of women aged between 18 and 24 in the UK have been harassed, with 45 per cent experiencing unwanted sexual touching.

Gill Manly, Croydon’s Women’s Equality Party branch leader, said: “With the rise of incidents this is clearly something we are not very happy about as women or the Women’s Equality Party.

“Having been a victim of a sexual attack myself many, many years ago in broad daylight on the Tube I find it very disturbing that this has been withdrawn.

““I can cite several examples back in the 80s of men exposing themselves and also coming up and rubbing themselves up against me and feeling quite free to do that, so I do know it goes on.

“It is very traumatising. I have had friends talk to me about it happening to them, it is really unpleasant and frightening.

“I pray there isn’t a spike [in sexual offences] but what worries me is that people who do perpetrate these kinds of acts may feel like they have an open field now and I find that very concerning.

“It is not a good move or a wise move.

“It seems very blinkered and I would love to understand the reasoning behind it.”

BTP set up Project Guardian in 2013, a multi-agency project involving the Met Police and the City of London Police, after a Transport for London (TfL) survey found 90 per cent of unwanted sexual behaviour on the transport network went unreported.

It was created in conjunction with three women’s organisations, the End Violence Against Women Coalition (Evaw), Hollaback London and Everyday Sexism.

Project Guardian has since been replaced with a well-publicised campaign, “Report it to stop it”.

Sarah Green, the director of Evaw, told the Evening Standard:“We need to hear from BTP’s chief constable, and from the Department for Transport and the Home Office, as to whether such plans have been consulted on and what the intention is to ensure our national railways police force is able to respond to and ultimately to deter sexual offences.”

Mark Newton, assistant chief constable of BTP said: “Our aim is to ensure that the significant expertise accrued by the existing dedicated sexual offence unit of now 23 officers based in London, and our proactive teams, are captured, standardised and embedded as best practice across the whole new crime business structure at a national level, providing more resources and a consistent and more effective approach to tackling these offences.

“Thankfully, the most serious sexual offences are rare on the railway and they will always be allocated a senior investigating officer supported by a dedicated team.

“The majority of sexual offences are those where offenders, if arrested, would be unlikely to receive a custodial sentence.

"Unfortunately, whilst 40 per cent of the victims of these types of offences do not wish to support a prosecution, this does provide us with very valuable intelligence to deploy our resources more effectively.

“We will always put victims first and we are determined to deliver an investigative process that is evidence based.”