This case is of interest to me because it raises…and not for the first time…the issue of the use of reasonable force when dealing with conflict situations.  It is as ever a highly sensitive area and without acurate eye witness accounts or cctv footage it may be impossible to unpick what happened on that night. The four securaity guards in question are not the only ones who should be called to question here as their employers also have a part to play. Did their employers ensure that they had recieved all the required and appropriate training?

For those of you that don’t know all door supervisors should hold an SIA licence.That gives them a basic knowledge to permit them to be legally employed as a security guard. But it’s a bit like getting your drivers licence. You don’t get your licence and then start racing formula one cars and so it is the case with security guards of busy nightspots.

Employers of such venues should know that additonal physical intervention and conflict management training is more than likely necessary if their venue is likely to attract situations of violence and aggression. Failure on their part to supply this is a breach, by them, of the Health and Safety Act. So they too have a part to play.

Now none of this helps the tragedy of Reece Lamude’s situation and the courts will decide the outcome of that later in the year. But I would like to hope that cases like this raise the importance to employers to provide appropriate training to their staff and also for employees to demand appropriate training if they believe they are at risk. It will all go along way to making it safer for us all whether we are an employee or a member of the public like Reece.

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I have just returned from a long festive break in Australia, visiting family, and whilst I was out there I was regularly thinking about what 2010 should bring for GoodSense.

Firstly, I am going to be working on my own physical and personal development. I plan to spend at least an hour a day on my personal development as I am always keen to learn and better myself. The reason I am working on my own personal development is to work on the business rather than in it as I tend to do sometimes.

Secondly, I also plan to spend at least a couple of hours a day on developing the business as a whole including the marketing side of the business making it more focussed.

As a team we all want to get fully up to speed with the latest accreditation process as there is a huge emphasis in 2010 to become properly accredited which is a good thing as it will improve the standards of training.

I am also going to be trying to get involved in much more physical skills training, so I can learn new skills to teach and pass on in our training sessions.

At GoodSense we are concentrating on getting all of the teacher training qualifications in place which means will either be learning PTLLS Preparing to teach in the Life Long Learning Sector, DTTLLS Diploma in Teaching in Life Long Learning or KTTLS. The reason for this is best explained below by the PTLLS website:

By 2010, anyone in receipt of government funding for teaching will require a PTLLS certificate. PTLLS stands for "Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector". Essentially anyone who delivers learning to one or more individuals will be covered by this regulation, whether the teaching is delivered in a classroom or at business premises. It will cover full time teachers delivering lessons in a college and at the same time will cover trainers and assessors providing courses and underpinning knowledge for work and vocational qualifications. The intention with PTLLS is to have a "one size fits all" qualification which will give all qualified teachers a substantive qualification that allows them to pass the necessary threshold to teach.

These courses are all modular, so you get your certification in stages one step at a time. By September 2010 the Government want all teachers to have these qualifications and they are going to be policing it through properly.

A couple of our instructors who work for us already have a certificate of education, so they don’t have to do this, but for the rest of us it should be a good learning process and will bring some further consistency to the GoodSense brand.

Later on the year, we are also going to be doing our coaching awards including a BTEC level three advanced award in coaching. A number of us are also doing our Physical Restraint and Breakaway Instructors Course, so we can teach door supervisors – I covered this in a previous post in a little more depth.

We are going to be concentrating on building up our  NHS London Work as park of the NHS London Procurement Process using some pioneering marketing strategies. We are also hoping to do more work with fire departments, crews and local councils in 2010 as we really think we have the skills to help more of these types of teams.

Finally ,we want to strive to secure an ICM (Institute of Conflict Management) quality award, to show off our internal quality and operating standard procedures. To get an award of this level you have to demonstrate the overall quality of your business and I am sure that we can go and out and win ourselves one of these. To be honest, it’s all about consistency and having a clear, standard way of operating.

By this time next year we want to be one of the major players in the London procurement process and overall I would like us to have more Conflict Resolution Training in the London area than any other training provider. I am sure this is going to be a great year for GoodSense.

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In my opinion, your perfect team of door supervisors needs four different types of team members. Obviously the amount of team members depends on the size of the venue. You might have two different staff on two venues opposite each other.

The prefect door team would consist of the following:

1. One big and scary guy (usually unshaven, very tall or very wide or both) basically they are physically very tough usually from a background of Rugby or Power Lifting. Guys this size can tend to have a bit of a beer belly but they can walk the walk. They might not even say anything on the door they might just stand there and look menacing.
2. A good communicator – they talk the talk by building rapport with people, they could be ex-military. They stop problems before they start by spotting them and being proactive. They usually suggest two ways of progress, the easy way or the hard way. In my opinion they have to give choices because if you feel you have no option you will fight. This guy also needs to be cool under pressure as people might push them to see how far they can go with them looking for weaknesses. It’s all about controlling their emotional state which comes from practice.  What I am saying is they are mentally tough. These guys can talk the talk and walk the walk.
3. A skilled guy – these guys are extremely fit and fast and they probably have a background in martial arts or boxing. They will deal with any problems quickly and scare others off by doing so. This guy could even be 10 stone as they don’t have to be that big, just great fighters. He is more of a walker than a talker.
4. The female team member – again she can talk the talk and walk the walk because she has a background in either martial arts or female rugby. A very good  standard female Judo champion could easily take out an average weight drunken guy. The added advantage of having a female team member is they can take the testosterone out of a situation because she can get in the middle of things and work the male egos a bit. When the two male door staff are outgunned, she can get in the middle of the trouble as its very unlikely a male will hit her. Another advantage is that she can search women on the door and she can go into the girls toilets to look for trouble or drugs etc.

You would usually have a minimum of two guys working together but the best scenario is to have the four. The other two could be just around the corner, so they all work together as a team. If something is going wrong in one of the venues the security company can change the team accordingly.

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We think this training will be a perfect fit with what we currently offer, as our style of conflict resolution training includes many safe methods of avoiding violent conflict. However, if a situation does turn violent and nasty we also teach our delegates (of our higher level courses three and four) ways to restrain people quickly and easily. This style of training is very popular with people working on the front line of our health service and we are hoping it will be popular with door supervision staff too.

The SIA describes this training on its website:

“We have developed a competency (skills) requirement as part of our licensing function. Individuals applying for an SIA licence must prove that they are properly qualified to do their job. If they don’t hold one of the SIA-endorsed qualifications then their licence application will be refused.

“We believe that this will result in a more competent and professional workforce. It will also improve the public image of the private security industry and make it more attractive to potential employees.”

Any training company that wants to educate adults after September 2010 has to have accredited course training which I think is a good thing. Our trainers are also currently going through their teacher training qualifications and are all booked onto BTEC level 3 Restraint and Breakaway Instructors Qualifying Courses. We need three accredited qualifications in order to be allowed to deliver the SIA door supervisor training ourselves, these qualifications are as follows:

1. Teacher training qualification (Approved by awarding bodies)
2. Conflict Management Qualification (we are doing 1886)  
3. Physical Interventions Qualification

These course are usually accredited by one of the following bodies: City & Guilds, Edexcel, BIIAB and the National Open College Network.

At present only one of our team has got all three of these qualifications but by the end of February 2010 all of our team will have them. We are currently training to an NVQ level 3 standard, so we will be able to train people up to a NVQ level 2 although I have plans to go even further with our development.

Part of the four-day door supervisors course will include a section on physical interventions. The advantage of our delegates going through this course is that all of our trainers have got a wealth of expertise with physical interventions and most importantly we have real life experience in the field. In other words we have the CV as well as the theory to back up our knowledge.

My honest opinion

Although this new training is both time consuming and costly for our business, I am sure it will be good thing in the long run. I can see a more long term view that all of our trainers will be properly accredited and any competitors that don’t have the relevant accreditation won’t be able to practice or teach anymore without these qualifications.

So in short 2010 is a very exciting time for the team at GoodSense as we move into a new area of Conflict Resolution Training.

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