Now landing on desks is the March 2023 print edition of Professional Security Magazine, as ever your first and best stop for news and views about and from the private security industry across the British Isles, writes editor Mark Rowe.
We return to the Brixton Academy, that claimed the life of a security operative in a crush at a concert at the venue in mid-December; and also to do with safety, football, that is struggling to deal with a chronic problem of flares and other pyrotechnics thrown by spectators, whether at the field of play or each other, including at non-league grounds well down the football pyramid. In related news, the Sports Ground Safety Authority (SGSA) is moving to reinforce the difference between safety stewards and the SIA-badged that carry out security tasks covered by the regulator (picture by Mark Rowe, steward walking around the Hednesford FC ground in a recent midweek Southern League match).
We feature tech – such as the proof of identity – and people; we return to interview ASIS UK chair Letitia Emeana, and the MD of FGH Security, Peter Harrison. We also take a major look at business improvement districts, visiting one on the eve of its vote for a fifth term. BIDs, we find, are a relatively little-known but significant glue that holds high street protection together – and it’s a niche for guarding contractors, as some BIDs are looking to hire on-street patrollers, as part of the service they offer their levy-payers. To tie a couple of our features together, we asked Peter Harrison among other things about the New West End Company contract to patrol Oxford Street and district, that FGH won.
As always we try to offer something for everyone, whatever your field of security; hence a page digesting a recent National Audit Office report, an ‘Investigation into the performance of UK Security Vetting‘, UKSV being a necessary service inside UK Government. The NAO sees few grounds for optimism: UKSV’s record in delivering timely clearances continues to be poor, efforts to recover performance over the past year have included prioritising certain types of clearance at the expense of others, and longer-term efforts to transform the way security vetting is delivered have made little progress.
Plus regular features such as Magazine MD Roy Cooper’s gossip page for manufacturers and distributors; a calendar of industry events for this year and into next; four pages of ‘spending the budget’; and four pages of new products and services. If you’d like to take a look at a printed copy with a view to subscribing, email [email protected]. You can freely read past editions of the magazine as a ‘flip page’ read at www.professionalsecurity.co.uk/magazine.
