Invitation to The Security Institute

This week I was invited by The Security Institute to participate in the Protect Duty consultation organised in response to announcement made In February 2020 by the Security Minister and the Prime Minister advising the Government’s intention to legislate in order to improve security at public places, the consultation process has been anticipated for 12 months and has finally been launched this month.

The proposed ‘Protect Duty’ would seek to improve protective security and organisational preparedness at a wide range of publicly accessible locations.

It was great to attend and be part of an exercise aimed to determine what criteria and thresholds should be considered in order to establish a balance around who the Protect Duty will apply to and what will the proposed Duty require stakeholders to do, before moving to the next stage of how to frame this legislation for public spaces which will definitely have an impact on a wide range and number of organisations and venues within scope of the proposed Protect Duty to make the public safer at publicly accessible locations.

Some of the themes discussed included:

• Scope (public venue owners and organisations operating in publicly accessible locations)
• Coordination via building on existing information sharing platforms
• Consideration of responsibilities
• Consistent consideration of terrorist threats and methodologies
• Appropriate protective security and organisational measures
• Changes for organisations as a result of implementation of the Protect Duty
• Government support via advice and guidance
• Inspection and enforcement.