27-11draft

Security Management
annual gathering, networking:
The Security Institute conference in
London last month had some highcalibre
speakers; and a high-calibre
audience, too, Mark Rowe reports.
The security at the venue,
the Honourable Artillery
Company, off the City Road,
looked exemplary. You step off the
pavement, to a guardhouse with
turnstiles for those on foot and a
barrier for vehicles; not oppressivefeeling
by today’s standards. But no
tail-gating or talking your way in with
bluff. If your name wasn’t on the list
of conference attenders, you weren’t
getting in, and not before you showed
photo-ID. The HAC is an oasis of
calm in the city, including a cricket
field. Like all good conferences,
the Institute’s felt like an oasis too,
for meeting others and for listening
to speakers. As a sign of the times
and how busy people are, far from
everyone could stop all day - and yet
the calibre of speakers was as high as
any in the UK private security year.
Consec, the annual conference of the
Association of Security Consultants,
is on a par, but not a fair comparison
as it’s aimed (to state the obvious)
at purely consultants. The ASC
by the way also uses the HAC for
its quarterly gatherings. Besides a
beautiful place, it’s a sign of how
institutions are familiar with hosting,
having, private security.
A speaker’s wish
Arguably the most striking remark of
the day came from the last speaker
of the morning, Allan Burnett, a
former senior Scottish policeman
now a director at the Glasgowbased
guarding and ACS Pacesetters
company SecuriGroup. Burnett said:
“I wish I had had these seven years
somewhere in the middle of my
police service, because among many
other things it [working for private
security] gives you the commercials.
I talk to military colleagues as well
as former police colleagues; you lack
the commercials, and in this modern
world it doesn’t matter if you are in
the public, commercial or voluntary
sector, if you don’t understand money,
you have got a problem.” To leave
Burnett; for that to happen - police
entrants to switch into private security
for a spell, then return to police - can
we say that the police have to change
more than industry? It’s going to take
more than years, maybe a generation
or two. Change is happening; take
for example Burnett appearing on
Scottish TV to comment on policing
and counter-terrorism affairs. Burnett
showed a picture of the old Muppets
Statler and Waldorf, the cantankerous
hecklers; Burnett said he refused to be
like them. That was a characteristic
of the conference; while the topics
were highly serious, such as crisis
response, and (from Det Chief Insp
Clarke Jarrett of the Met) a briefing
on the London Bridge and other terror
attacks of 2017, and the speakers were
all business-like, the tone was easy.
That comes from the Institute coming
up to 20 years; no fly-by-night set-up.
Long haul
Among the attenders were old warhorses
from the early days. Besides
musing on how time flies, there was
a sense that the Institute is there
for a yet longer haul. The register
of chartered security professionals
(CSyP), was described by one CSyP
as a ‘slow burn’; it has yet to gain
traction with businesses, let alone
the public, that just as you go to a
chartered accountant, or a chartered
surveyor, you should turn to a
chartered security professional. A
past ideal of the Institute’s, to go for
chartered status, seems off the table as
unattainable for now. Is the Institute
glass half full or half empty? You only
had to listen to the buzz of talk in the
event’s break to feel it’s half full. The
Heavy artillery
at Institute
conference
numbers there were bumper; and of
quality too. To name only two from
the corporate sector, Professional
Security spoke with Marcus Ransom
and Frank Cannon from EDF Energy,
the firm building the Hinkley Point
nuclear power station (Frank came
from oil firm Chevron; he wrote in
the February magazine on raising
awareness in non-security staff).
Others came from McDonald’s; and
as Baroness Ruth Henig pointed out in
her opening address, the Institute has
arranged group membership, as taken
up by the Foreign Office, Ministry
of Defence and Civil Aviation
Authority. Peter Drissell, aviation
security director of the CAA, was not
able to speak as planned, due to the
crisis over the collapse of the airline
Monarch; his deputy David Elbourne
spoke instead. Briefly, instead of
airlines and airports having to comply
with what the regulator sets, as
audited now and then, the CAA wants
‘performance-based oversight’, by
Sems (security management system).
The ties that bind
The Institute, always, is what
members make of it. Former chairman
Mike Bluestone, for example,
busier than ever work-wise, is an
‘ambassador’ for the CSyP. The only
criticism that I might offer is that not
many attenders were wearing Institute
ties; Paul Grainge (a speaker at the
ST17 Glasgow event) and Denis
Murphy of PD Ports were honourable,
pardon any pun, exceptions. I cannot
criticise, as I left mine years ago on a
bedroom door hook in Cambridge. p
An antique cannon
points south towards
the Honourable Artillery
Company’s near-300-
year-old cricket field in
London EC1
Photo by Mark Rowe
This month
n The Security Institute is
running CPD seminars in
Warrington with a nuclear
sector slant on November
13; and in London on
conflict management on
November 22.
n Met Police Deputy
Commissioner Craig
Mackey is the guest
speaker at the annual
remembrance evening on
November 15; also at the
HAC.
UNHAPPY
‘We know sportswear
and memorabilia are
some of the most
counterfeited products
online, which highlights
the huge consumer
appetite for these
goods.’
Det Insp Nicholas Court,
of City of London
Police’s Intellectual
Property Crime Unit.
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk NOVEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY 41
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