Announcement

January 2020 magazine

by Mark Rowe

Now on desks is the January 2020 print issue of the monthly Professional Security Magazine, which you can read for free online at the ‘magazine‘ section of the website. Like the previous issue and the next one, we bring you ‘boots on the ground’; an example of where private security officers are hired – and have been for some while – to patrol public space. That’s not only or necessarily the semi-public (or semi-private, depending on which way you want to put it) space of shopping malls, but high streets and shopping streets, that historically has been the sole preserve of police with the power of arrest.

In this issue as part of a visit to Wiltshire and Hampshire we feature Salisbury and Wiltshire, where the local council and local business improvement district (BID) respectively have hired Venture Security, the Andover-based SIA-approved and CSAS-accredited contract guard firm. Under the community safety accreditation scheme, Venture like other firms has extra training and vetting, and if agreed with the local chief constable some police-like powers, to do on-street patrols. As we find in Salisbury, it’s to carry out everyday low-level policing of pavements, although Venture stresses that it’s not the police nor replacing the police – who indeed through CSAS gave permission and back-up for the work. The private policing of public space whether through local government or a BID appears to be an idea whose time has come – regardless of the political party in power, and without much or any public debate. As an aside, consider also the long and favourable coverage given by the Daily Telegraph on January 3 to the cases of shop theft brought to court by the private firm My Local Bobby, owned by TM Eye, whose work against counterfeit shops in the Cheetham Hill district of inner city Manchester was featured in the November 2019 print issue of Professional Security Magazine.

Plus the regular gossip page from Magazine MD Roy Cooper; and something for everyone, no matter what your sector or part of UK private security, whether manned guarding, personnel, electronic security installation or cyber.

We feature the refurbishment work at the Coventry Building Society, taking up an invite to see the Corporation Street branch in Birmingham city centre. Not only physical and electronic security, but security by design has been built into the refurb, while in tune with what the building society wants to achieve for its customers and indeed staff – a welcoming and at the same time safe experience.

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