Draft27-12

Shopping Centres
exercises at malls:
We featured the Project Servator
patrolling of Intu Lakeside mall in
our September issue; here we bring
another angle, from Ian Pugh, head
of group security for Intu.
About Ian Pugh
He started in security as a
security officer in 1985,
and ‘with a bit of hard work
and lot of good fortune’
rose through the ranks. He
joined Intu as head of
security in 2006; he’s
responsible for the mall
chain’s security strategy
across the UK, and in
Spain. He’s a member of
the crowded places
information exchange,
chaired by Nactso; and sits
on the security committee
for Revo (the new name
for the British Council of
Shopping Centres). He
also sits on the European
security committee for the
International Council of
Shopping Centers.
Pictured: Intu Lakeside
at Thurrock in Essex
at a Servator police
deployment in
midsummer; and CCTV
outside the mall and in
the car parks
Photos by Mark Rowe
42
Briefly, Intu is the re-branded
name of the shopping centre
managers Capital Shopping
Centres Group plc. Hence the centre
in Stoke-on-Trent is Intu Potteries,
for instance. The firm acquired
Westfield centres in Derby and Merry
Hill. Among the larger ones are the
Trafford Centre in Manchester; and
Lakeside in Essex, which in the
summer marked the first anniversary
of Servator patrols, including
by armed police. As police told
Professional Security there, three
years ago armed officers walking a
mall would have been unthinkable;
now, it’s with mall blessing; such is
the change in attitude, and the threat
level. Ian Pugh made the same point
about that change. He began speaking
to the Retail Risk conference in
Leicester last month with praise of
the emergency services. He disclosed
that he wrote to chief constables in
areas where Intu has centres, thanking
police: “I couldn’t do my job without
the support of the police.”
Company values
Ian’s responsible for 21 malls; that do
nearly £6 billion a year in retail sales.
“It’s very much a ‘crowded place’;
on a busy day in Trafford Centre,
you will get 100,000 people. That is
why we appreciate all the support and
advice. I am not an expert in counterterrorism
and I don’t intend to be but
I am keen to get the knowledge and
expertise.” Cyber is also a big area,
Ian said; Intu is a member of the
Cyber Security Information Sharing
Partnership (CiSP), run by the official
National Cyber Security Centre.
Intu employs more than 600 security
officers across its estate; and has 800
in total on those 21 sites. “I am very
fortunate I work for a company that
values security; I don’t get everything
I want ... but I do get my voice heard
and I report straight up into the
board; that’s key for me to know I
have got that support.” The National
Counter Terrorism Security Office
(NaCTSO) attends an Intu security
DECEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
committee that Ian runs and that has
the company’s heads of department,
such as risk and insurance. On
counter-terror, Ian said the malls are
not trying to re-invent the wheel: “We
take the guidance from Nactso and
CPNI [Centre for the Protection of
National Infrastructure] and make it
fit our business.”
Comms
Ian works closely with the heads of
security of the ‘anchor’ and indeed all
retailers that rent units in the centres.
Intu runs exercises, and reviews: “We
always try to learn and we always try
to do better. And the other key thing
for us is communication.” Hence he
works closely with Intu’s comms
and public relations and media team.
When the UK went to ‘critical’ terror
threat level in May - and the Arndale
Centre was within the cordon after the
Manchester Arena suicide bomb - ‘a
lot of the work I did over that period
was with our comms team’. In 2014,
Nactso brought out a PSIA (protective
security improvement activity) tool,
that Lakeside trialled. It covers types
of terror attack on a crowded place,
and a site can be assessed and scored.
Ian reported that he’s been able to
show year on year improvement, and
target-hardened shopping centres. So
that, when the UK went to ‘critical’
in May, the centres were able to open
the next morning at a higher level of
security, as an ‘insurance’. Talking
of insurance, by being able to show
risk mitigation, Intu can get some
rebate from its insurer, as long as the
firm reinvests that into other security
measures. Just as rival retailers’ loss
prevention and security managers talk,
not giving away commercial secrets,
but for the benefit of all against crime,
so Ian meets with other mall operators
such as Westfield and Macarthur Glen.
Servator
Ian went on to Servator. Intu’s were
the first shopping centres to deploy
the policing patrol tactic. As Ian said,
if you had asked a shopping centre
owner, three years ago, would you
see a firearms officer walking around
a centre, like an airport, ‘they would
have said no’. As Ian added, the
threats are now different, starting with
the Paris terror attacks of November
2015. Again, Ian praised the support
of Essex Police at Lakeside (and
British Transport Police, as there’s
a railway station over the road).
As Professional Security featured,
a Servator deployment may be of
sniffer dogs, normal uniformed
police or plain-clothes, ‘and they are
leafletting the message to the public,
we are making that environment
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
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