Crowd control and policing for safety

fter the event, some interesting statistics came to light:

• Over 3 million people attended the site over the four day period.
• There were between 800 and 900 First Aid cases of which only one required an overnight stay in hospital.
• 80% of the public used public transport.
• There were in the region of only 40 arrests in the period for minor offences.
• At the end of the event, the public dispersed from the site at a rate of 10,000 people per minute.

The smooth running of the event from a stewarding and security perspective was no accident. An immense amount of work went into planning. Jon Corbishley was engaged by Unusual in January in the role of stewarding and security consultant. Unusual’s site extended from the roof and forecourt of Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square.

Clear objectives were identified from the outset.
• The health, safety and welfare of the public was paramount.
• When considering site access, Health and Safety was a key consideration.
• Whatever accreditation or pass system was implemented, it had to be kept simple to enable all stewarding and security agencies to work with it easily.

There were five branches of the police, numerous police forces and on the weekend itself, in the region of 10,000 police personnel were deployed.

Accreditation fell into two halves. Everybody working on the project had to be accredited by Unusual. In addition, those working on the roof and in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace had to be accredited by Buckingham Palace. Unusual instigated photographic credit card style passes for all production staff. Critical data was held for all staff, performers, participants , visitors and stewards so that the police could verify the identity of any of the 22,000 personnel involved in the project at a moments notice.

Meetings were frequent, but critically, when agencies were involved, decision makers at strategic level were always present.

Show and Event Security managed and provided the stewarding workforce from May 2nd, when work started on site. Working closely with The Royal Parks Police, North Carriage Drive was used to receive and distribute vehicles down to the site. The whole area was open to the public during the build period, effectively creating a construction site with public access. The stewarding had to be carried out with detail, care and sensitivity. Many of the public were tourists, who were somewhat bemused to see 80 tonne cranes and forklifts zooming in and out of their camera lenses. Not only were the public to be protected from harm, but the stewards also had to enforce the site rules as specified by Lindsay Barrowclough, the Health & Safety Manager for Unusual.

Steward staffing levels started at 6, rose to 30 during most of the build period and up to 256 over the weekend of the event. Briefing them all was a major undertaking, especially considering some them were not from London. Customer care was an important issue, so a broad range of potential enquiries were addressed in the process of briefing.

The efficiency of the whole stewarding and security operation was put to the test on Sunday 2nd, when a fire broke out inside Buckingham Palace. A full evacuation of the area was ordered and a joined up operation swung into action with the stewards assisting the police in clearing 40-50,000 members of the public down the Mall to a safe dispersal point on Trafalgar Square. The assistance of 80 of Unusual’s stewards at the outbreak of the incident played a vital role in stabilising the situation in front of the world’s media, who were set up in Green Park - no more than a hundred or so metres away from the fire itself!