We take up an invite to visit Indi Singh, the new head of security at De Montfort University in Leicester. Among his staff meet an even newer member.
He is Fred, and he is sitting on team leader Nigel Burnham’s desk (pictured). If that may seem too familiar, his eyes are bright, his smile wide, and his black uniform is immaculate. Credit to the suppliers for having such a small size. For Fred is a cuddly toy bear, and a mascot, brought in as part of the security department’s work with freshers. On the morning of Professional Security’s visit, the De Montfort campus just across the inner ring road from Leicester city centre is quiet. Already the first young people are taking suitcases out of car boots and taking up residence for the start of the academic year, and for some a new course.
The control room
When, sat in Indi’s office (room 0.07 in the estates building) we exclaim that all life is on a campus, Indi’s reply is about the international students. English may not be their first language. At De Montfort as other UK campuses, ‘after 5pm we become the welfare service for the university’. During the day, like other unis, De Montfort has teams that work on student services; at night, it’s the uniformed services – besides security patrollers, building wardens and attendants in halls of residence – who either see students around campus, and respond, or are directed by the control room. While we’re there, Cole Brookfield is on duty in the control room. De Montfort has about 670 cameras, including internal.
That ranges from every car park (car parking comes under estates, and security) to external ones on the top of buildings that give views across the city centre. Like some other urban unis – Aston in Birmingham for example – De Montfort has no perimeter fence to stop anyone from walking through it, which could include football or rugby supporters on foot (the homes of Leicester Tigers, and Leicester City FC, are each down the road to the south of the city centre). Like any city centre Leicester has parades, protests; and just as all life is on a campus of 22,000 people, so what’s in the city centre might spill into the campus. Besides, across the ring road are numerous private blocks of student residences next door to campus.
About Indi
Indi came to De Montfort from the Security Industry Authority (SIA). While he knows, and is known in, Leicester as he was the area’s investigations man for the SIA, Professional Security readers will know him from Operation Sentry which he set up, and that we featured in the November 2021 edition when a Sentry event ran at a London West End club, to take SIA-badged door and security staff through scenarios, such as an acid or knife attack on the premises.
More in the December print edition of Professional Security Magazine, that you can read online freely on this link.
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