Marks and Spencer are the first UK high street retailer to gain the Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s surveillance camera certification. The official presentation of the award – certified by the SSAIB inspectorate – was outside the head office of M&S at Merchant Square, in London W2, on Wednesday morning, October 19.
Pictured left to right are Mick Kelly from the Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s office; Brendan McGarrity (FOUR Group); Tony Porter, Surveillance Camera Commissioner; Stephen Grieve (lead assessor, manned services, SSAIB); Stephen Halpin (FOUR Group) and Bunmi O’Tola (Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s office).
Read more on how and why M&S put in the work to comply with the surveillance camera code of practice – briefly, because it made good commercial sense, besides being the right thing to do, voluntarily, for good governance – in the December 2016 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
Visit the Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s website – https://www.gov.uk/government/news/marks-and-spencer-first-retailer-to-gain-sccs-cctv-certification.
Clint Reid, Marks and Spencer’s Head of Corporate Security, said: “We are pleased to continue our partnership with FOUR Security and optimistic about the potential improvements in protecting our people and working environment that gaining the SCC CCTV certification will bring.
Brendan McGarrity, head of FOUR Security Consultants, which worked with the retailer towards the certification, said: “We praise the vision and tenacity of Clint and his team in realising the importance of gaining certification and the hard work they put in, helping us achieve it with them.”
And Tony Porter, Surveillance Camera Commissioner, added: “For a retailer of Marks and Spencer’s size to achieve full certification against the code is no mean feat at all! They are not required to comply with the code and have done this voluntarily, which makes this all the more impressive. Working with FOUR Security Consultants and the SSAIB, they have been able to demonstrate they comply with the code across their vast estate. If an organisation of this size can achieve certification, there’s no reason why anyone else can’t and shouldn’t.”
The SSAIB was also the inspectorate for one of the very first CCTV operations to gain certification, the north London borough of Enfield, featured in the November 2015 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
