The Department for Transport wants airports to pay for their policing – which could mean disputes over security levels.
According to the DfT, the new way will mean a consistent approach at airports large and small to planning for security, and assessing whether a dedicated police presence is required. The DfT stresses work on the basis of risk assessment by MATRA groups – multi-agency risk and assessment – at each airport. Some groups are already happening, voluntarily. Some airports have complained about having to pay for national security, that is, counter-terror policing, despite paying business rates. Airports point out that airport security costs have risen after 9-11, and fear the extra cost will put them at a competitive disadvantage to airports on the Continent. Will airports pass the costs to airlines, and passengers? Police meanwhile fear commercial interest might mean ‘minimalist’ security.
Will smaller airports have the risk and security expertise to do MATRA? As the recent consultation pointed out, MATRA group members will have to be background-cleared to ‘counter terrorist check’ level. Will it just mean more bureaucracy? Who will give a ‘strategic steer’ to the airports? Police, airports and the Government alike appreciated that any change would need ‘senior buy in’ to work.
The Government expects there to be some security measures which must, as a minimum, be carried out at all qualifying airports. These include, for example, conducting a multi-agency threat and risk assessment, and production of an Aerodrome Security Plan. However, the approach individual airports use to meet these requirements will vary considerably in accordance with local circumstances and as such we do not expect procedures at all airports across the UK to be identical. We expect security stakeholders to work flexibly to meet the requirements of the legislation to ensure that a proportionate security response is created at each qualifying airport.” An airport in the National Aviation Security Programme already has to make an ‘Airport Security Programme’.
Jim Fitzpatrick, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, told an Airport Policing Conference in London in November: “The new security planning framework will set a structure where threats can be accurately assessed, security arrangements discussed and agreed, and the police role determined as efficiently as possible … No-one will have an excuse not to engage with their security colleagues, to discuss openly and frankly what needs to be done to tackle the threat posed by terrorism and other crime.”
As the minister admitted in the speech, airport operators have ‘genuine and important concerns about the new system’. For one thing, the cost; and whether they will be able to demand value for money from the police. “The Government believes it is right that airport security must be funded in a fair and balanced way – just as it is elsewhere in the private sector, at football grounds, shopping centres or other transport nodes, where the owners pay for policing.”
The law will come in, in 2010, and airports will have to pay for policing from 2011. Ministers will resolve any disputes over Airport Security Plans (ASPs) or Police Service Agreements (PSAs). The DfT will have to bring out more details such as: will a security plan be looked at every year; and what will prompt reviews of the plan, such as terror alerts. Might seaports be next for this treatment? And what other places – critical national infrastructure?
Among those responding to the consultation last year were contractor G4S.
