In recent print issues of Professional Security magazine, we’ve featured variations on a theme: sectors taking steps to accredit security services beyond the basic individual badge and approved contractor status run by the UK regulator, the Security Industry Authority (SIA). At universities, that’s the ProtectED scheme for accrediting unis’ campus security and more general student welfare services; and in the June 2018 print issue, Scottish universities are featured, having drawn up for trialling a campus security-specific qualification for security officers. The SIA likewise is trialling an addition to the basic four day security guard training, to include counter-terrorism awareness under the Project Griffin banner.
Each sector – healthcare, oil and gas, sports stadia, critical national infrastructure, railways – has its own security needs that the basic SIA badge cannot very well cover. Hence it’s for each sector to look to itself, as it best knows what it wants its security staff if in-house to deliver, and what (if contracted out) buyers ought to look for.
In Brighton and Hove, the business crime reduction partnership (BCRP) has done accrediting of its own for four years. The need dates from 24-hour licensing. Off licences besides pubs and clubs could go for up to 24-hour opening. They required – or under the terms of their licences they might have to provide – door security; but, a doorman might not be cost-effective, at least not all the time. Hence some security companies at the Sussex coastal resort, seeing a market, offered mobile response units. If a client reported an incident, the SIA-badged officers would drive to the scene, whether to provide security to a convenience store that otherwise had no door supervision, or as added security for a pub or club that already had some door staff.
But the age-old question arose for buyers of security; how to know whether a service – while all within the law, being SIA-badged – was good or bad? Hence for four years the BCRP annually has accredited mobile response units. There are three, local, contractors: Consec Risk Management; Pagoda Security; and Resolve Security. Intriguingly, only one of the three, Pagoda, has also SIA approved contractor status (ACS). The ACS scheme and Brighton BCRP’s are each voluntary.
Kylie Wroe, nightsafe manager for Brighton BCRP, told Professional Security that the mobile response units use the BCRP’s radio network, as a means of quickly and easily communicating with clients. As with other accreditations, the BCRP cannot recommend one company or another to its members. Hence the accreditation, to show Brighton venues that those accredited firms provide a level of service: that responders are trained in first aid beyond the basics asked for in the SIA licence application training; likewise the officers have gone through the BCRP’s own vulnerability awareness training, and training in crime scene management, fire safety and drug awareness. Practically, the vehicles carry sharps boxes (in case responders come across needles) and weapons boxes. The cars carry bottles of water, to give to any night-goers in need of hydration; and the officers must wear body-worn cameras. None of these things by themselves are particular to Brighton; vulnerability awareness, for example, originated in Newcastle, where the Northumbria Labour PCC (Police and Crime Commissioner) Vera Baird campaigned for door staff to be made better aware of predatory behaviour against the intoxicated; and more to the point, how door staff should intervene if they see a vulnerable person. Hence such schemes as Ask Angela; which Brighton has recently adopted.
Brighton and Hove holds regular meetings with the accredited response contractors. That such a scheme is running is a sign of quite how vibrant the Brighton pub, club and restaurant scene is. Kylie said: “They all work together really well, although they are rival companies, in a way; and they really know the night-time economy; a lot of those companies have been around for the last ten, 15 years.”
They are among attenders of the Friday night briefings by Kylie to BCRP members; one in the city centre, and another in St James Street, near Brighton Pier and inland from Marine Parade, the LGBT quarter. Again, such briefings are not special to Brighton; the August 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine featured a similar briefing in Clapham and neighbouring parts of south London, by the local BCRP alongside police. In each case, the BCRP and police tell attenders – typically door staff and bar managers – what and who to look out for.
Just as doormen and barmen attend those briefings before their night shift, so security staff as Kylie says go ‘above and beyond’. Resolve Security has chosen to do patrols on Brighton seafront, a choice which arose from cases of people under the influence of drink going into the sea, at risk of drowning. The beach and seafront after dark can also be the scene for sexual assault, and drug dealing. Likewise door staff will look beyond the threshold of their venue, for instance against anti-social behaviour. “If they see things on the street, they work really well with Sussex Police.” Those Sussex Police on duty on busy Friday and Saturday nights will carry the BCRP’s radios.
Brighton BCRP other projects cover restorative justice; renting breathalysers to pubs and clubs so that door staff can in a more non-confrontational way check for intoxication and bar drunks; and exclusion notices, integrated to ID-scanning machines in venues. Hence the support from Brighton BCRP manager Lisa Perretta for the re-launch of the National Association of Business Crime Partnerships (NABCP) including a proposed accreditation of BCRPs. For how else can businesses tell the difference between a pubwatch or shopwatch scheme and one as sophisticated as Brighton’s – all calling themselves BCRPs and asking businesses to pay for services?
Picture by Mark Rowe; street art, Brighton.
Background: Katy Bourne, the Sussex PCC, recently attended the St James’ Street Local Area Team (LAT) General Meeting, where members of the public and local business owners raised issues about open drug dealing and drug taking in parts of Brighton.
