Draft27-12

News
black friday alert:
Pictured above,
Purbeck Head by Emily
Young, artwork outside
the Blue Fin Building,
Southwark Street,
Bankside, London SE1
Photo by Mark Rowe
A sniffer dog on Servator
deployment, as featured
in our November 2014
issue
Photo courtesy of the City
of London Police
About Servator
We last featured Servator
as brought in at Sellafield
by the 100pc-armed Civil
Nuclear Constabulary, in
our April to June issues.
Visit www.cityoflondon.
police.uk.
14
Call to cooperate
A senior policeman last month urged
retailers’ marketing and security
teams to talk to each other, ahead of
‘Black Friday’ and the start of the
Christmas shopping rush, to head off
bad tempers and even disorder by
bargain-hunters. “This may sound
obvious, but previous incidents
were unacceptable and simply could
have been avoided with a better
focus on customer safety rather than
just high volume sales,” said Craig
Mackey, writing as National Police
Chiefs Council lead for business
crime reduction and private security
industry liaison. p
Servator patrol
with Aviva
We’ve been featuring Project Servator
– the police tactic to deploy various
assets at unpredictable times to deter
and disrupt criminals including
hostile reconnaissance by terrorists –
since 2013, begun by City of London
Police (CoLP). While understandably
police do not want to make details of
tactics public, and educate wrongdoers,
how far will police take
private security into their confidence?
Specialist City officers recently
joined security staff at insurer
Aviva in a Servator deployment. As
police say, the project means more
interaction with local businesses and
the public who can act as the eyes
and ears for the police; as advertising
for years has been careful to stress.
CoLP officers and members of the
mounted unit and Tactical Firearms
Group (TFG) joined Aviva security
staff on a patrol, training them on
how to spot suspicious behaviour
and potential threats, and keep
their local community safe. Aviva
security operations manager, Wayne
Taylor, said: “The officers were very
engaging and the knowledge they
passed on has definitely stepped up
the confidence amongst our security
team, along with their awareness.
What was really good to see was
the public engagement with our
team after the City of London Police
officers had moved on. It made us
realise the long-lasting impact of
these patrols and how worthwhile
they really are.” More, page 42. p
DECEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
London BIDs
In our January issue we featured the
guard forces across London funded
through business improvement
districts (BIDs). They’re still around,
as questions from the floor showed
at a recent Policy Forum for London
seminar on crime and policing.
One speaker, Met Deputy Chief
Commissioner Craig Mackey, said:
“I talk a lot with private security and
private security organisations around
London. We are talking much more
about how we work with that industry
together. So when I talk about
partnerships I am also talking about
partnership with private security.
There is a very strong and powerful
movement around professionalising
standards in the private security
industry. Tom Harris, operations
manager at Better Bankside, the
BID on the South Bank, asked if
‘section 92’ will continue; under the
1996 Police Act the Met Police has a
match funding scheme, and typically
councils will match-fund for extra
police. As Sophie Linden, the deputy
mayor for London for policing,
The Business Continuity Institute’s
annual conference in London, BCI
World 2017, was the occasion for
the launch of the sixth edition of the
good practice guide, GPG 2018. BCI
chairman James McAlister, pictured
right, introduced BCI executive
director, David Thorp, to address
an invited audience. He described
the launch, coming five years after
the previous edition, as the end
of an 18-month process involving
60 people. He said: “This is truly
global in its scope; it represents the
replied, it’s ‘buy one get one free’.
She could not give a commitment
that it would continue, though she
said the scheme was ‘fantastic’.
The event chair, London Assembly
councillor Steve O’Connell, added
that Croydon’s BID had funded such
a team. David Fereday, operations
man at the Fitzrovia Partnership, said
that the BID in W1 was recruiting
SIA-accredited wardens, to patrol in
Tottenham Court Road; to provide a
uniformed presence and reassurance
to businesses, ‘which was not
happening’. He said the idea had been
‘massively picked up’ by members;
however one thing was missing.
Unlike the New West End Company’s
similar private security on-street
patrolling around Oxford Street,
Fitzrovia’s has got very little support
from police, he complained: “There
needs to be consistency between the
different boroughs [the West End is in
Westminster; Fitzrovia, Camden] and
how they respond to security industry
accredited patrols. We chose not to go
down the section 92 road.” Mackey
asked in reply if he could take up the
case later. More, page 44. p
Best practice guide
latest thinking about practice in our
profession.” Visually, the ‘BCM
Lifecycle’ of previous editions has
evolved from a separate standalone
cycle of activities, to become
inter-connected cogs, which include
physical and information security,
and facilities management. Deborah
Higgins, BCI Head of Professional
Development, said that business
continuity was for overall resilience;
it was working with risk and security
managers, and, increasingly, IT. More,
page 41. p
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
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