Chris Cully, the Managing Director of risk & security management company, Dilitas comments on the latest decision of the CPS in not prosecuting Vincent Cook who grappled with two burglars. Vincent Cook, a 39 year old husband and father, runs a courier and logistics business in Greater Manchester. Presumably a hard working chap, who provides local employment, pays his taxes and, who neither expected nor wanted two burglars standing at his door, when he answered it on the 18th September. One of the burglars, Raymond Jacob, had a knife with which Mr. Cook was threatened as ...

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and swims like a duck...writes Infologue.com Workplace contributor and labour lawyer of Beers Solicitors, Paul Housego as he examines the issue of Self Employment. This recession is harder longer and deeper, in my view, than many publicly admit. Especially in the security industry there is pressure on already tight margins. Employees are by far the biggest overhead cost of any security company, so there is the temptation to try to escape some of the cost, the risk, and the regulation involved in employing people - by having work done by self-em...

Bill Butler has been on holiday so this month's blog was written by Stephen McCormick, our Director of Service Delivery.Looking back, the past month seems to have gone very quickly. I've spent much of my time working with my senior team to put more detail into the specifications for the new systems that we'll need to support us in the future, as well as dealing with all the normal day-to-day business issues. The development work is going well and I'm hopeful that we'll make significant progress towards changing the way we work with individuals and businesses well in advance of the...

In his sixth exclusive article for Infologue.com the BSIA’s Director responsible for the Olympics, David Evans continues his Countdown to the Olympics exclusively on Infologue.com, David writes about the parallel events and the challenge they present to the security of the Olympic Games; "In my first article for Infologue, I described how the security planning for the 2012 Games sat within the UK’s Counter Terrorist Strategy, CONTEST, and how industry was recognised as an essential partner in that strategy. The second article explained how implementation of CONTEST was being undertaken b...

Cash in Transit (CIT) robbery has, in the past, been seen as a victimless crime limited in its impact to the industry and its clients. Infologue.com talks exclusively to Kevin O’Connor, Risk Director at G4S Cash Solutions UK, about research recently conducted by the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science (JDI) and what it means for the CIT industry.What prompted this research to be commissioned and what were its objectives? For a number of years now there has been plenty of anecdotal evidence that far from being an isolated activity, CIT attacks are often associated with a much wider r...

Bill Freear is the MD for Pilgrims Group Ltd has agreed to write a regular column for Infologue.com. The first column asks “What’s Intelligence for?” Pilgrims’ Intelligence Division supports its operations team on a global basis, allowing rapid assessment and response to crisis situations such as those seen recently in Egypt, Libya and the Middle East. The company has produced a number of ‘ground truth’ reports which allow its teams and clients to make timely and informed decisions. Bill writes: The scene: a wet January night, very late. Mike is standing at Clapham Junction wa...

Bob Forsyth, the Managing Director of MITIE Total Security Management (TSM) has agreed to write a monthly blog for Infologue.com. In Bob’s first blog he looks at the pendulum swing towards involving security managers in a more influencing role in the buying process of security services. Over the last five years the security industry has seen a shift in how services are procured and I’ve been giving some thought to the evolving role of the security manager in the industry. It’s really interesting to see how security managers are starting to come back in to their own and are becoming i...

In his second column, Chris Cully, the Managing Director of risk & security management company, Dilitas puts security manpower for the Olympics under his magnifying glass. The countdown to the Olympics is 365 days and dropping daily. Only now have London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) announced they need another 20,000 licensed security officers for the Olympics. The overriding issue now, is how to find the number of security staff required and get them trained to Security Industry Authority (SIA) requirements ready for the start of the Games. It w...

Just when the security industry thought it was safe to get back in the water after Securitas had acquired the business of Reliance Security Services, Geoff Zeidler, Country President Securitas UK & Ireland, and Vice President of the British Security Industry Association (BSIA), hooked another acquisition, Chubb Security Personnel, writes Infologue.com Editor Bobby Logue. Two great deals but now comes the real challenge, the enormous task of merging three leading security companies (three out of the six largest UK security companies) into a single super brand (the second largest company ...

I am still enjoying my (fairly recent) freedom from school holidays that means I am at work during most of August. This has a number of advantages, not least the number of people travelling in the mornings, but also the relative calm allows me to catch up on many of my office responsibilities and I have been able to get out and talk to some of our licensed individuals and ACS companies. In late July I was invited to a National Doorwatch event in Nottingham. I was joined by other staff from the SIA and we were able to talk to door supervisors from the Nottingham area about how we handle appl...