It’s a winter weekday morning in the car park of Corley service station, one of the Welcome Break chain. Mark Rowe reports.
At the far end of the car park, a police car with three well-wrapped-up officers inside. There’s a liveried Chamberlains Security car; they’re a guarding and key-holding company based in Leamington Spa. And there’s an NHS Logistics Authority van. All life is here. Beyond the trees, the gentle roar of M6 traffic to and from Birmingham and Coventry. Inside the automatic doors, to your left a Gamezone, ahead, the toilets, to the right, a Burger King and Starbucks. I am meeting David Robinson, head of security at Welcome Break, who was in the December 2005 issue, for an update. He is here and we sit at two armchairs by the window at Starbucks. Briefly, after a 31-yaer police career, he is six years into private security, at Welcome Break. He begins with how impressed he is by the professionalism of the private security industry and how at the December 2006 Building a Secure World conference in London, he was impressed when he met some young security managers, not with police or armed forces background, but making security their chosen career. And yes, even in a technological age, security work to a large extent comes down to experience of life, "to put it crudely, not believing the first thing you are told". In other words, an understanding of what makes people tick. "As a security manager you have got to deal with a whole host of people; you have got to deal with the board, the senior management of the company; and you have to deal with, in my case, the site directors, who run their own million pound business; and you have got to deal with the person on the shopfloor; so I think communication skills are still an important tool in the security manager’s briefcase, really."
The topic of the police crop up; Corley is one of the service stations where Welcome break has deployed a PCSO (police community support officer – in this case, Warwickshire). "And they do an invaluable job; they are a bridge, if you like, between the business and the police," David says. He adds that that’s not to say Welcome Break doesn’t continue to improve CCTV, access control and other measures (more on them later), and good house-keeping. But the PCSOs provide ‘huge reassurance’ for service station users. Another reason for building relations with police is the motorway chain’s problem with drive-offs from the petrol forecourt: "And although we have good CCTV and although we can capture the index number of the car, a lot of criminals of course are on false plates, so trying to identify them is quite a task." He adds that generally speaking police have taken roads policing more seriously in the last year or so, on the lines that criminals drive cars and if they steal petrol they may not have insurance and may be offending in other ways, of interest to police. Building relations with anyone however does depend on timely and accurate information. On crime against lorries David makes the point that when the side of a lorry is slashed, or a truck is stolen, the driver may not tell the local constabulary, or Welcome Break.
"What has happened since I last saw you; I have used business continuity as a driver to increase good house-keeping. I know that business continuity is not driven by terrorism alone; it can be a food alert, it could be a spillage, a host of disasters waiting to happen. But because it’s so topical and in everyone’s minds, I have used that as a driver to say what would happen if …; and if we actually have got the right procedures in place … a good company worth its salt has to have a business continuity plan in place and it has to be well developed and rehearsed and it has to go be applicable to the site you are on."
Looking up, I query if David’s job ended on the threshold of Starbucks, or the other retailers. All people on the site are Welcome break employees, he replies, whether on the forecourt, coffee shop, caterers. "So the sort of things I would be thinking about would be the security of our assets, which would include our stock and our cash, really, which is something that one reviews all the time, because we are actually a cash-driven business. One of the issues that we do have is protecting our Gamezones, because it’s quite amazing how many people spend a lot of money in our Gamezones; and we have machines that pay up quite a lot of money, £500 jackpots, so by definition the machines are like money boxes waiting to be opened, and security measures at the Gamezones are constantly reviewed." Options include invisible forensic marking products, that spray the person breaking into a slot machine. "We find that the best deterrent, apart from the obvious CCTV, is actually to have a permanent presence in Gamezone areas. It’s the same as shoplifting, in the sense if people know that they are being observed, and watched, then they are less likely to steal than if nobody is watching them." And sure enough on leaving the service station, looking inside the quite small, windowless room that has about a dozen fruit machines around the walls, there are four fixed cameras inside vandal-resistant housings, and a colour monitor in the far corner of the ceiling showing CCTV footage, and in the other far corner a member of staff is standing at a high table, doing some paperwork. An employee presence; not a strictly speaking security officer. The public perception of motorway service stations, David continues, is that they are quite safe places. That said, Welcome break cannot cater for every eventuality. There will be thefts of laptops left by businessmen from the back seats of their company car. I noted on walking from the car park to the coffee shop a sign asking people to remove laptops from view. Security measures and general house-keeping such as cutting back foliage so that people can see well outside, besides the rebranding of the business, all seek to make the places fresh and a good place to be – as David says, places where you might see anyone, from royalty downwards.
What of the old question that any company is not in business for the sake of security, but to earn a living? Godo security equals good business, David answers. Hence clean sites, CCTV and signage saying it’s there, staff patrolling car parks, so that people feel safe, and are more likely to stop at a service station, and come again, rather than at a competing chain. A phrase David repeats is security ‘in our dna, in our bloodstream’ in terms of the company. That is, getting the money that goes over the counter into the till, banked. Zero tolerance on cash loss. "You are right," David says, "in the sense that the security manager does not produce anything tangible to add to the bottom line, but if you were to take security out of the equation you would find the company could not make as much money as it could. Whether you are a bank, a department store, all have a need for security; and that’s why I think the private security sector has grown in the way it has; it’s not an optional extra any more." To use a motoring simile, security is not like a car’s spare wheel that you pull out of the boot when something goes wrong; security is one of the wheels.
Carrying on the subject: David talks of balancing security, a fine line between flooding a place with security people, or only having your own staff take a more responsible position: "And I suppose we have gone down the route, the person in the Gamezone is not security per se; he is a responsible person who would be getting on with other duties. You have to be very careful about how you use crime prevention signage; if you give the impression if you stay at a service station you are going to get your wheels taken off your car, not many people will stop there. There’s a delicate balance." At night, while strictly security people are patrolling, it is also for the duty managers to make sure that the places are manned; and not only staff at the tills, heads down, taking money, but shop assistants, people keeping an eye and ear on what is happening. Not security staff, but staff security aware. "And that is another thing we have done since I last saw you; that we also take security training very seriously as well." Either ex-police trainers or David will give Welcome Break staff training in security topics, for example the criminal law in relation to theft. Awareness training: what would you do if you saw an unattended bag? "And very often lorry drivers will come in and have a shower and put their bag down ; if we went into evacuation mode every time we saw a lorry driver’s hold-all. We would shut the place down; so we are trying to educate our staff in security, so they are our eyes and ears. David is one person; Welcome Break has sought to use its facilities managers in a much more managerial role on site, for security.
David had already answered my question about what other technology he was considering. "I think sometimes to much reliance is put on technology, like you put a camera up and you think that’s the be all and end all of life. Unless it’s monitored, its value is limited. At night for example my strong view is that good lighting is just as effective, if not more so, than good CCTV. The presence of a staff member who looks as if they have some authority very often would deter somebody. Criminals don’t want to be caught and don’t want to be observed and want to escape."
Speaking generally about Welcome Break, it is opening new outlets; it’s at Eurotunnel at Folkestone; there’s always something around the corner. Exciting. "The business is only as good as – and I know it’s a cliché – its people, but we have some very good people, who take security seriously." And that’s where the interview ends; we are at the bottom of our Starbucks mugs. Next stop for David: Somerset. One thing working at Welcome Break means is plenty of motorway driving.
