The national winners of the British Security Industry Association’s Security Officer Awards, sponsored by Camberford Law plc, received their prizes from Her Royal Highness Princess Anne – president of the Patrons of Crime Concern – at the Association’s Annual Luncheon on 10 July.
For the second year in succession well over 200 nominations were received, illustrating the outstanding achievements of officers the length and breadth of UK plc (‘Cream of the Crop’, SMT, June 2002, pp30-33).
The national winners in the Service to the Customer category were: Jay Anderton (Securicor Security Services), Patricia Hunter (Chubb Security Personnel) and Andrew Stylioti of Lynx Security Services. In the Outstanding Act section, Bam Bello of Securicor Security Services, Matthew Bridger (Reliance Security Services) and Alan Brierley of Group 4 Total Security took the honours this time around.
Tony Callaghan (The Corps), Neil Duggan (Initial Security) and David Stewart of Reliance Security Services came out top in the Best Newcomer category, while Eddie Frame (Group 4 Total Security), Chris Pratt (The Watch Security) and Craig Smith (again of Group 4) were judged to be the Best Users of Technology.
Best Team awards went to the Chubb Security Personnel Team from the Kirkgate Centre in Bradford, the Securicor Security Services Team working at Sunderland AFC’s Stadium of Light and the Securicor Security Services Team at Huntingdon Life Sciences.
Winners of this year’s BSIA Chairman’s Awards were also announced at the event, once again held in The Ballroom of London’s Grosvenor House Hotel. The winners were John Finney – former technical manager at the BSIA
– for his ‘Contribution to Standards’, the Tower Hamlets Warden Team run by The Corps (‘Contribution to the Community’) (see ‘Partners on patrol’, pp20-23) and Noble Security Services (who scooped the ‘Contribution to Training Award’ for the Trafford Guardsafe scheme).
Digby Ram (chairman of the BSIA’s Cash and Property Marking Section) and Alan Townsend (crime prevention co-ordinator at The Flying Squad) ran out joint winners in the ‘Promoting the Industry’ category.
In his first address to an Association Annual Luncheon, BSIA chief executive David Dickinson called on security companies to increase their support of local efforts to reduce crime. “Effective partnerships are important to running our businesses on a daily basis,” he said, “but we can no longer shut ourselves into little boxes and think about ‘the business'”. In Dickinson’s eyes, the major contractors must look at ways in which they can help to improve the environment for those in the local community.
“The contractors can involve themselves in crime prevention initiatives, and provide extra ‘eyes and ears’ for the police service,” added Dickinson, who rounded on the Police Reform Bill as a document that “lays the foundations to enable security companies to work more closely with the police service”.
Dickinson also spoke about the need to encourage the development of new technologies, and achieve closer liaison on technical issues. He stressed: “We must work even harder at achieving closer co-operation and innovative solutions with stakeholders. The challenge of timely standards development, and then achieving national recognition of those standards, remains at the very heart of the Association’s work.”
