Guarding

Lone worker firm hails annual turnover

by Mark Rowe

Send For Help, the lone worker protection firm, reports annual turnover has broken £8m for the first time, a rise of 30 per cent on the previous year. According to the company, both private and public sectors increasingly seek ways to protect their employees using technology.

The business was founded in 2010 by brothers James and Will Murray. It operates three subsidiary brands; Skyguard, Guardian24 (pictured), and Peoplesafe – a competitor owned by Rocksure Systems, which the Group acquired in June in a deal worth £10m. The three protect more than 100,000 people by key-fob sized GPS safety devices and apps, which are linked to an alarm receiving centre staffed at the company’s headq offices in Epsom, Surrey.

Turnover was this year up from £6.1m last year, with profits of £2.4m — an increase of 121pc on the previous year.

James Murray, CEO of Send For Help said: “We have seen demand for our services rise for a variety of reasons. Organisations want to protect their staff. But we also live in an increasingly litigious world, and the public and private sectors are becoming more savvy in protection of lone workers. Our technology is affordable and easy to use. Companies recognise the advantages of personnel protection when they look at the implications of legal costs and compensation as well as bad publicity if someone gets injured or assaulted.

“Others have turned on the news over the last few months and seen events both at home and abroad which inevitably heightens awareness of safety and security. We live in uncertain times, and this has seen a number of prospective clients cement their decision to use our service.”

The company’s clients include Pets at Home, Talk Talk and the NHS, and estate agencies whose staff show people around properties. The firm adds that pub chains seeking to protect bar staff who might be open to abuse or assault are increasingly using the service, as are traffic wardens and other council personnel.

Send For Help is also used by 150 local authorities and 200 housing associations, and over half of police forces in the UK use the technology to safeguard victims of sexual or domestic violence, and people on witness protection.

The company has links to police control rooms, so can bypass the 999 system and receive a faster emergency response if someone has been threatened, attacked or are in danger. Once the “SOS alarm’ button on the device is pressed, a user can speak via a two-way audio in the device to a controller at Send For Help’s fortified alarm receiving centre, who will decide on action – whether calling an ambulance, alerting police, asking the worker’s supervisor to check in on them, or simply to confirm it’s a false alarm.

The device sends its GPS location to the monitoring centre which uses mapping software. Clients typically pay a £10 monthly fee for each device.

Technology runs in the Murray family. Their father Jan — who is the company’s President — founded PC World in 1991, and exited his second venture — Internet Technology Group (ITG) — for $250m, weeks before the dot.com bubble burst in 2000. Their Polish grandfather escaped to Britain from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany during World War Two, and set up REW, a chain of retailers selling electrical goods across London including Tottenham Court Road.

The lone worker protection market in Europe and America is forecast to double from £105m per annum to £226 million by 2021, according to recent research by analysts Berg Insight.

Visit sendforhelp.co.uk.

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