Safer nights out in Buxton – case study [Article courtesy of the SIA Update October 2019 Newsletter.]For the first time ever, our Partnerships and Interventions team recently hosted a demonstration of three simulated mass-casualty incidents at Buxton’s Level 2 nightclub. These simulated incidents included a mass stabbing and an acid attack. There was also a demonstration of an invacuation, which was an idea born out of the terrorist attack at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris in November 2015.This was the initiative of Indi Singh, who covers Buxton for our Partnerships and Interventions East team. He was accompanied by Elsie Winnett from our South team, Rosie Batchelor and John Sandlin from our London team, and Nigel Davies and Trevor Holmes from our East team, with support from the members of the communications and stakeholder team.

Operation Kea

‘Operation Kea’ was a joint operation between us, Derbyshire Constabulary, and High Peak Borough Council. It involved over 50 volunteers from the police service, the SIA, the private security industry, and Chesterfield’s Inspirations Theatre Company.During each scenario, Level 2’s security staff – Saxon Security – demonstrated their training and awareness of Run, Hide, Tell and Remove, Remove, Remove. The event was a practical demonstration of the You Can ACT e-learning.The event was the culmination of 18 months of working with the community to ensure that venues are prepared for ‘real-life’ incidents such as those described above, and that they appreciate the importance of having plans in place to deal with major incidents.The point of the demonstration was to:

• Enhance public safety
• Increase confidence in the private security industry.
• Showcase best practice.
• Demonstrate working with the community.

Who was involved?

The simulated exercises were observed by other regional private security businesses. These included:

• Leisure Guard Security (approved contractor – see below)
• Radius (approved contractor)
• Security & Stewards UK of Derby
• Pentagon Security Force (Stoke on Trent)

Leisure Guard Security

Approved contractor Leisure Guard Security’s door supervisors, who took part in the simulated exercise put their skills into practice three days later during the incident at Manchester’s Arndale Centre on 12 October.The simulated exercise at Buxton helped prepare Leisure Guard Security, an approved contractor, for the mass stabbing attack that took place at Manchester’s Arndale Centre on Friday 11 October. Leisure Guard Security provides security services for some of the shops within the centre. Its operations director, Saj Kadva, wrote in a letter to Indi:“We want to thank and praise the Police, Arndale staff and other Public services for their support during this horrific incident. We were very fortunate to have our staff on duty during this period, they did an excellent job in keeping people safe during the terror attack at the Arndale Shopping Centre. I am still in shock that my teams were doing “Run, Hide, Tell” for real, only days after Operation Kea. I honestly believe the refresher may have saved some lives on that day as all the staff deployed to the Arndale knew exactly what to do and ensured staff and customers were safe.“