The release of a Netflix documentary about the disorder at Wembley at the final of the Euros football tournament in July 2021 is a reminder of how crowd safety remains important alongside counter-terrorism for the event security sector.
Hence a 76-page free document, Safer Crowds, Safer Venues available on the website of the United Kingdom Crowd Management Association (UKCMA). The past UKCMA chair Eric Stuart kindly answered some questions we put to him about the guidance, and the cause for it. See page 21 of the May print edition of Professional Security Magazine. Eric confirmed that the trigger was the crush at the Brixton Academy, pictured, in south London in December 2022 that left two dead, including a security officer.
He recalled that he gave evidence at the Manchester Arena Inquiry, ‘not because I was asked or wanted to, but because some of the experts were unintentionally misleading the inquiry and it was going in a direction that would have in our view, potentially have led to some even more dangerous outcomes and recommendations. We won some points and lost others. For instance, I still strongly believe they should have recommended merch [merchandise] sellers, F+B [food and beverage] sellers and others to have first aid training as well as SIA or perhaps instead of! Let’s face it, if a bomb goes off, Security has multiple tasks: check exit routes and outside for secondary devices, co-ordinate the evacuation along safe routes, check for secondary attackers loitering nearby, prepare to brief and hand-over to the first arriving blue lights. If you’re all on your hands and knees giving first aid, who is looking after the 99 per cent of uninjured people. In the meantime, the F+B and merch sellers are doing what?”
Authors of chapters are, besides Eric Stuart and current chair Annie Chebib; Gary Simpson, a former police chief inspector now security director at ASM Global; Ise Murphy-Morris, an events consultant who lectures on crowd behaviour and managing event safety at the University of Plymouth; Julie Tippins, head of risk management at music promoter DHP Family; Luke Laws, ops director of nightclub Fabric; Mark Mcquade of the event stewarding and guarding contractor FGH Security; Ric Robins of the Met Office (because weather can drastically influence an outdoor event, whether bringing mud or even flood); Russ Phillips of Crowdguard; Sam Spencer, head of operations at Canary Wharf venue Broadwick Live; Tim Chambers, venue security manager at AO Arena; and Tom Devine, MD of TMS Protection. Visit https://safercrowdssafervenues.com/.
Brixton is not the only place that has shown how easily fatalities can occur in even small crowds, but also how they might have been avoided. Eric said: “Investigations and enquiries have also clearly shown a lack of crowd safety supporting documentation for those many thousands of small and medium premises falling outside the ‘Green’, ‘Purple’ and ‘A Guides’ that have been in place for many years. It led many of us involved to ask how we had not even realised such guidance was missing.”
“In the absence of any established authoritative lead or apparent appetite to write such guidance, the document has been written voluntarily by the industry, for the industry. We hope it will provide venue operators, organisers and their stakeholders with a general outline of what the many authors and editors consider to be accepted good practice in terms of crowd management for performance spaces and licensed venues in the United Kingdom. It consists of a combination of accepted good practices written by experienced individuals, which will assist in the planning and delivery of safe venue operations. It exists to support small to medium sized venues, to try and protect all those who use such venues, either for work or for pleasure, and is based upon the practical learning of those who work in the field of crowd safety in such spaces and the learning from some of the incidents that have led in recent years to the loss of life we all desperately seek to avoid.”
