Scott Gough Managing Director, UniTrust Protection


Services (UK) Ltd


After a decade of stability, the social, economic and political turbulence of the past couple of years has


shown how important it is for businesses to be adaptable and flexible, and open to working with other organisations. Any supplier to the property sector has to have these attributes. There’s no more room for complacency.


Compared with ten years ago, the security industry has more collaboration opportunities than ever before. At UniTrust, for example, we've developed relationships at strategic levels with the police/law enforcement, military and intelligence communities, while the City Security Council (CSC) brings organisations together with initiatives such as the recent training programme on major incident responses, delivered jointly with the City of London Police, and focusing on sharing intelligence and resources with security firms.


For any security company, the key to success is the officers on the ground. We’ve seen real changes in how they work with clients and local communities. During the pandemic, security staff helped estate and facilities teams, acting as their eyes and ears when they were unable to get onsite, taking/distributing deliveries, working on reception, cleaning – even solving engineering issues!


While most officers have now returned to straight security, they’re able to offer more support when required and work as true partners with other onsite teams. This delivers a better, more efficient service, with a more secure environment for property occupiers and users.


In the next ten years we expect these relationships to be developed further, so we can all adapt quickly to future challenges. Together with terrorism, the biggest threat the industry faces now is public protest, and the inevitable disruption to businesses targeted. Better use of intelligence, a focus on hostile reconnaissance, and working in partnership with policing services are vital to protect client interests.


Achieving a resilient approach to security


Angela Lawson Chief Operating Officer, Security Institute


During the last decade I have certainly witnessed a


paradigm shift towards resilience in the security sector, yet the


concept is sometimes taken out of context and the requirements of the association between security and creating a resilient business or community is misunderstood. As a profession we need to encourage alignment between strategic planning and operational requirements to create buy-in from the top down and bottom up. We also need to own ‘failure’ instead of turning a blind eye and analyse what went wrong to inform the preparedness requirements going forward, a task which barely gets mentioned in those conversations.


Certainly, the four elements I have, and continue to use, are time, human influence, communication, and finance, which have by default become the four constants during the planning and review phase of creating a culture of resilience; but what does this mean?


Allow time to plan, review, test and conduct a post-incident analysis. Acknowledge the impact of human influence; we all have expectations and have a level of unconscious bias, and this can have an impact on personal performance and what we expect of others. Acknowledge behaviour can be unpredictable and consider the ‘what if’ scenarios by investing in training to test skills, knowledge and understanding. Learn to identify leadership qualities and respect not everyone is a leader but has the ability to contribute to other critical areas. Clear concise communication is vital. Avoid jargon, as this can hinder daily activity, let alone a crisis or emergency response. Understand the financial requirement and impact to create or improve measures and resources.


Going forward, I see very little change to the influence these four cornerstones have in the future, although the aim is to be agile enough to prepare for the known challenges, pre-empt the unknown knowns, and develop a premortem analytic approach to building a security resilience framework. By recognising what we learn today can influence change in the future, regardless of the other elements we include in the decision-making process. This requires recognition that success and failure are equally influential in the process if we want to achieve a long-term sustainable and resilient approach to security.


© CITY SECURITY MAGAZINE – WINTER 2022 www.citysecuritymagazine.com


Ian Dyson QPM Former


Commissioner of the City of London Police


The change I have chosen is the context in which the security industry operates, which I believe has changed and will


require the sector to continue to change its thinking and responses to the challenge. We have witnessed over the past few years more mass protests – XR, Stop Oil, Insulate Britain – that adopt peaceful, passive resistance and non-cooperation to publicise their causes. This is nothing new and protest remains a fundamental right and strength of our democracy. What has changed is the growing sense that promoting a cause justifies significant disruption.


There have always been groups that conducted extreme action to further their cause – think animal rights activists – but what is changing is a greater acceptance across society, and the courts, of this ‘end justifies the means’. The interpretation of ‘reasonable excuse’ has been, through various court judgements, expanded to cover broader caveats than the lawmakers intended – preventing Climate Change can be the ‘reasonable excuse’. What does this mean for the industry?


Well, despite planned legislative changes by the current government to restrict protest, mass movements will find ways to overcome this. They will look to longer causal chains to justify action – targeting a bank for funding the oil industry is old hat, what about owners of thirsty 4x4 cars, or the business that hasn’t installed solar panels?


And what of the security workforce who may have sympathy with a cause? Increasingly, exemptions and exceptions are allowed in law, whether dress code, travel or working patterns, so why not an exemption from protecting a building against a cause they believe in? This shifting narrative of broad, big issue, protest with mass support (both explicit and implicit) will challenge the industry to protect the assets it is employed to protect.


But the industry will, of course, rise to the challenge. I am certain of that.


>


6


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36