Counter-terrorism – the threats faced by the UK and what security managers can and should know and do about them – is featured in the April and May editions of Professional Security Magazine. Editor Mark Rowe offers a digest.
Should someone in UK private security know what the current UK terrorism threat level is? Do all the 449,000 SIA licence-holders (according to the March 2025 licensing statistics released by the Security Industry Authority) know there is such a thing as the terrorism threat levels (as set by the security Service MI5)? Someone working in private security does not need to know, nor keep up with such things, just as a surgeon does not have to know who is the Secretary of State for Health and a lawyer need not know who is Lord Chief Justice; yet it’s at least a sign that the person takes an interest in his wider work; and, importantly, has a sense of the need for continual learning, that their occupation keeps developing the same as the wider world, which includes criminal threats.
What may hamstring the security industry’s collective work to counter terrorism, and that may come to bedevil any applying of the Protect Duty under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill soon to become law, known commonly as Martyn’s Law, will be that the authorities (for sound, operational reasons) withhold details – indeed, part of the withholding is that we don’t know how much is withheld. When thwarted plots reach the public domain in court cases, or successful plots are gone over in inquests and official Inquiries as after the Manchester Arena suicide bomb of May 2017, we have to assume that the lessons we can pull from those cases are the same as the ones from the many more plots stopped by the counter-terrorism authorities.
To take the man who was sentenced to life in prison this month after he was convicted last year of preparing acts of terrorism, having been arrested at St Jamesโs Hospital in Leeds in 2023. What came out in court was that those who work towards an act of terrorism look at past (successful) acts as guides – whether to inform where exactly or what sort of targets they will attack, or methods. Counter-terror police point to how terrorists may seek to use more than one method – for example, they may hire a car to use as a ‘vehicle as a weapon’; that vehicle may carry the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) they make; and they may carry knives to carry out a marauding attack.
The Leeds case also brought out how sheer chance can derail an attack, and so save lives – at Leeds, the attacker sent a text as a bomb alert to an off-duty nurse (hoping to spark an evacuation, so that the attacker could attack those fleeing – only further evidence of the need for building managers to be alive to the need to have an invacuation option). However, the text was not seen early enough for the attacker’s plan and the evacuation didn’t happen. A patient saw the attacker, and talked to him – talked the attacker down, as the attacker acknowledged when arrested. Likewise in the Luton case of a murdered family, that recently reached sentencing, the teenage boy’s plans went awry. Plans don’t survive first contact for criminals any more than for armies. The challenge for security and site managers is – can you plan for serendipity, and should they rely on it?
The Leeds case, the 2021 murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess, and other acts of terror show that terrorists do reconnaissance – that is, have more than one potential target before they choose. If terrorist plotters get derailed, that brings the risk that sites may get targeted (or their neighbours may have to respond with, for example, an emergency lockdown) for sudden, apparently random reasons – again, difficult to plan for. No wonder in his October speech, MI5 director general Ken McCullum summed it up as ‘the most complex threat environment we have ever seen’.
What do we know? Counter-terror (CT) police advise that while their main focus is on Islamist-related terrorism, an extreme right-wing terrorism terror threat is growing (‘roughly 75pc Islamist extremist, 25pc extreme right-wing terrorism’, Ken McCullum said in October). They also look at LASIT (Left-wing, Anarchist and Single Issue Terrorism – CT policing like anything else abounds in jargon) which hasn’t led to any attacks (yet).
As for what security managers might get told by the authorities – police forces have CTSAs, counter terrorism security advisers, usually retired and experienced cops. They like everyone else only have so many hours in the day; they focus on perhaps 400 of the country’s most important sites. These almost pick themselves, whether because they’re critical infrastructure or (in the jargon) ‘crowded places’. The obvious trouble there is that, as the Home Office found during its consultations towards Martyn’s Law, the UK has about 900,000 sites (no-one can even give a precise total) and 650,000 owner-operators. CTSAs and the state in general is never going to inspect, or have any meaningful dealings with, all of them.
The dirty word here, as with crime generally, is displacement. The Houses of Parliament has armed police at the gates? Terrorists, right-wing extremist and Islamist alike, will sheer away and seek to attack MPs – and have murdered Jo Cox and Sir David Amess – where they are more vulnerable, when in their constituencies.
Who are the terrorists to watch for? Police have stated for years that thanks to the internet, someone (particularly the young – the Leeds attacker was 27 when arrested) may radicalise themselves, fast: no need to join a group, attend a training camp, which might be infiltrated or reported to the authorities by a suspicious public. The April edition of Professional Security Magazine sets out how the extremist (of any ideology or a ‘poisonous’ mix of conspiracies and disinformation, as Ken McCullum pointed out in October) may be a youth stacking shelves at your supermarket from a ‘nice’ home.
