What we can learn from the World Cup

29 Jul 10

By Gary Powers

It wasn’t just the England squad who found this year’s World Cup a real test – the security industry did too. But unlike the team, it wasn’t due to a lack of effort, writes Gary Powers, MD of Regency Security.

It hasn’t come home since 1966, but the World Cup never fails to challenge England’s security industry - especially the door supervision sector.

The intense emotion of the fans and binge-drinking culture surrounding it guarantee a sharp increase in home-grown anti social behaviour and violence.

The regularity of the event, however, means we are well prepared: risk assessments are updated to take into account all of the unusual variables, and extra security staff are placed on the doors.

With this level of preparation, the majority of pub-goers have a safe and enjoyable time, allowing licensees to cash in on increased business with minimal disturbance (even when England are losing).

But this year was different. In over 20 years of being in the security industry, I have never heard so many accounts of violence in venues, and venues being prevented from showing the World Cup, or being shut down altogether.

The reason? Poor security (or in some cases none at all). This was mostly in independently-owned pubs - the venues that were negatively affected failed to have correct risk assessments in place, didn’t have enough security to cope with extra custom, or didn’t hire SIA licensed security staff.

What’s the score?

Given the amount of collective experience of major sporting events in this country, this should never have happened. So what went wrong?

Without official stats it is difficult to give a qualified view, but it’s incredibly important that the whole security industry takes stock of the issues in order to fully protect our clients in the future.

For the leisure sector, the most obvious benefit of the World Cup is that it presents quite a rare opportunity to take advantage of massively increased footfall and longer drinking hours.

To fight off the competition and optimise sales, licensees can become consumed with operational aspects such as stocking up, marketing, managing staff rotas, and installing screens big enough to show the games.

And when you consider that this year’s event followed the recession, in which an estimated 52 pubs closed every week, it’s even more understandable that the World Cup became a commercial lifeline.

As a consequence, security planning was often left to the last minute (or not considered at all), and many venues were left without the right amount of door staff.

Potential trouble
Out of those that did get the numbers right, some told their security personnel to go home after the game when everything seemed fine despite the disappointing result (not realising that violence often kicks off much later in the night).

Add to this the fact that some venues didn’t update their risk assessments for this specific set of circumstances, and it’s not difficult to see why an England whitewash had the potential to cause trouble.

Like so many other security firms, we were inundated with last minute enquiries from venues desperate for door staff. But as anyone in the manned security sector will know, we cannot simply inflate our numbers for a few weeks – to qualify for an SIA license can take weeks and costs enough to deter anyone who just wants temporary work.

At Regency Security, we did everything we could to help with late requests, however most of our door staff had been allocated weeks in advance and, besides which, we never compromise security by stretching our resources.

The victims of this year’s World Cup, by and large, were the small, independent venues – large groups and national chains were largely unaffected by closure.

One explanation for this might be that the recession damaged cash flow for smaller businesses who were hoping to make do with basic security.

Another reason could be that these companies are not yet up to speed with changes to security legislation and proactive policing– both of which have changed a lot since the introduction of the SIA.

Lessons learned

So how can we help our clients take advantage of major events, rather than be swallowed up by them? The answer, quite simply, is to prepare them as we prepare ourselves.

• Encourage clients to book security staff as early as possible. Remind them of forthcoming events way in advance and make sure they plan security into their budgets. Inform them that, while the SIA is looking into temporary security licences for such events, staff will be allocated well in advance.

• Tell clients that risk assessments must be updated for special events or changes in legislation – it is not business as usual.

• Support your clients by offering to sort out training for their staff in areas such as conflict management and physical intervention. This will help them stop situations escalating in the first place.

Putting these added-value measure s in place will not only help our clients to reduce their costs and improve their business, it will also make us an indispensible force in more ways than one.