The opening event of Professional Security Magazine’s Security TWENTY year, ST23 Birmingham, ran yesterday at the Hilton Metropole on the NEC campus outside Birmingham.
As ever it drew a mix of people, from guarding, installers, consultants and specifiers, and anyone interested in private security. Between 8.30am and about 2.30pm an exhibition ran, while from 10am to lunchtime next door a conference chaired by Mike White of G4S heard from the manufacturers Optex Europe, Stratus, and Hikvision; West Midlands Police Supt Nick Rowe, on last summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham (the Metropole was among hotels that hosted athletes) and Steve McCormick of the Security Industry Authority. He outlined some potentially quite consequential changes for the regulator, around the ‘skills agenda’ (expect a smaller and then a larger conference by the SIA and a skills board to announce progress) with the ultimate aim of a mapping of the security sector in terms of skills and career paths, and a ‘skills academy’.
Steve McCormick also dwelt on the possibility of a different-looking approved contractor scheme, in the light of the Manchester Arena Inquiry whose volume one report in 2021 proposed compulsory licensing for security businesses, rather than the voluntary ACS. Instead of simply having ACS or not, might it be a five-star rating like restaurant food hygiene ratings, as on display on high street windows?
Mike White went through the Security Minds Matter campaign, seeking to raise awareness of mental health and well-being for the security sector, and what’s out there as best practice and help, whether for the front-line or managers or anyone.
On the show floor meanwhile the SIA was among the exhibitors, as were the industry bodies IPSA, the Security Institute, the BSIA and ASIS UK. The Public CCTV Managers Association (PCMA) again made use of ST for the hosting of their AGM, that heard (remotely) from the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Prof Fraser Sampson.
The meeting heard that the regulation of video surveillance under a camera commissioner is up in the air, because (as Fraser Sampson set out in his recently-published annual report), the UK Government intends to abolish the role of the commissioner, through the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill although that’s unlikely to have attained Royal Assent before the end of the commissioner’s term of office, which ends on March 1. It does leave in doubt what will become (if anything) of the commissioner’s code of practice (again, as stated in the annual report).
Thanks must go to all who donated cash – £225 in total, in memory of security officer Gary Hutchinson who died in December while working at Brixton Academy in south London. If you would like to donate to support Gaby’s family, there is a gofundme link: https://gofund.me/44da440f.
More in the April print edition of Professional Security Magazine. See also more photos at the ‘gallery‘ section of our website. Pictured: the CSL exhibition stand. CSL, Hikvision, IFSEC International and Dedicated Micros are ST’s sponsors.
ST’s next stop is Glasgow, the Hilton on William Street, on Thursday, March 30. As ever, ST is free to attend, whatever your interest in private security; we do ask that you register online, so that we can gauge numbers for catering (ST serves tea and coffee all morning, and a hot buffet lunch including vegetarian option). Email organiser Liz Lloyd at [email protected].
Visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/security-twenty-home/.
