Author: Health and Safety Executive
ISBN No: 0 7176 1834X
Review date: 13/12/2025
No of pages: 92
Publisher: HSE Books
Year of publication:
Brief:
Managing Crowds Safely: A guide for organisers at events and venues.
‘Crowds are unavoidable occurrences of everyday life; problems in their safe management are not.’ This first line in the second edition of the Health and Safety Executive’s guide to crowd safety sets the tone for the revised guide for security and risk managers of events. It’s thorough and practical, and oozes with best practice. Crowds happen in shopping malls and train and bus stations, the guide goes on: but it’s at sporting and other entertainment events, and one-offs such as fairs and air-shows and street carnivals, that the real crushes happen. The organisers may come to such an event for one or a few days of the year when they have a regular security job in the rest of the year. Yet whoever is in charge has duties under health and safety legislation – which includes crowd safety. It covers the sorts of things that experienced event organisers may have dealt with several times already – but it’s at the very least useful to have this book handy as a check-list, so that nothing in the rush of planning is overlooked. Take the danger of excess arrivals that could ruin your risk assessment of how many people are turning up. You could, the guide points out, make the event all-ticket, even if it is free, or emphasise in an advertising campaign that it’s all-ticket. The guide is clearly written by someone who has ‘been there’ – for instance, all the human quirks of individuals are covered. Such as: if people turn up early to claim vantage points, they’re ‘reluctant to move away, even if asked to do so’, although security staff or stewards may need those vantage points to monitor the crowd. Also, those waiting at entrances for friends or family can obstruct the flow of others. Maps on the backs of tickets are a good idea. Official language does get in the way of reality once or twice – for instance: ‘Those not satisfied with the quality of a performance or outcome of a sporting fixture may become aggressive, offensive and unco-operative.’ Bluntly, that could mean plastic bottles filled with urine chucked at the stage and risking the good looks of some very important musicians, or fans going on the rampage – and the score at a sporting event is hardly something the event organiser can arrange. More handy is the point that where individuals do something unauthorised and are seen to get away with it – climb over a barrier if they are frustrated by a queue for example – crowd psychology may lead many other normally law-abiding people to follow that example. Safety rules have to be seen to be enforced. People look for ‘clear, unambiguous information’ and if they don’t get it they will ‘form their own rules based on past experience and the observed behaviour of others, such as joining a queue, parking on access routes, taking short cuts, etc’. There’s a clear and unambiguous chapter on assessing risks that is of use for other security managers besides event organisers – setting out the steps to take. One, look for the hazards; two, decide who might be harmed and how; three, evaluate the risks and decide whether the existing precautions are adequate or whether more should be done; four, record your findings (incidentally, the law requires you to tell your staff, including any safety representatives, about your findings); five, review your assessment and revise it if necessary. It can be as banal as the likely route to the portable loos crossing the route from the main entrance at a company open day or fun day – which could lead to crushing, especially if there are a lot of prams.
Emergency management
Communication is the key in an emergency – but not everything; an urgent response to a member of the audience falling sick or injured may not require total evacuation. Whoever is in charge must be at the end of a chain of communication as short as possible, yet information must be accurate – misunderstandings could lead to an inappropriately large response to someone cutting a finger. Verbal signals may not be as useful as hand signs in a noisy area – bearing in mind that thousands of people can make a deafening noise. What if there’s a suspect package – how suspect is suspect, at your organisation’s big day? What do you tell staff in an emergency, and what the public? And how – by PA, alarms, information boards? Don’t forget that your event needs a procedure for re-opening of the venue – staff will have to be in place again at the entrances. Crowd monitoring, whether by staff or CCTV, should watch for signs of distress, pushing and surging, and shouts and other signs of bad temper or excitement – if there is one question mark over this guide, it’s that events can change from smooth to deadly dangerous in minutes, and there has to be a sense of urgency accordingly, or at least an understanding that things can turn nasty very quickly. There’s an appendix covering the relevant legislation – the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1999, the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1999, and the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 – plus fire safety rules.
Conclusion
This is a very handy little book, but it’s telling of an ideally clean, noiseless world quite unlike a lot of events – exciting and excitable, rowdy, noisy and boozy, with some crowds having sinister sections. Security managers at their peril take the World of Health and Safety Executive Books as the real world – what the HSE guide lays down has to be applied to the unpredicable real world, where things can go wrong, even if the crowds don’t want anything to go wrong, and sad to say there are event-goers who enjoy sabotaging events.<br><br>
– Managing Crowds Safely: A guide for organisers at events and venues. HSE Books. ISBN 0 7176 1834X. paperback, 92 pages. Ring HSE Books 01787 881165, website www.hsebooks.co.uk. HSE 020 7717 6000, website www.hse.gov.uk.
