The complex organisational landscape governing security at the Olympics has created doubts over responsibilities. Suzannah Brecknell reports on work to plug those gaps – and to recruit thousands of security guards

The Olympics may be the greatest show on Earth, but London’s 2012 games will also be the largest peacetime security operation ever conducted on UK soil. It will be like “four FA cup finals and Notting Hill Carnival happening in London every day, for three weeks”, says Andy Huddart, Olympic resilience lead at the London Resilience Partnership (LRP). This multi-agency team was set up in 2002 to plan London’s response to emergencies, and is one of many organisations involved in ensuring that the Olympics are safe and secure.

Soon after the election, new sports and Olympics minister Hugh Robertson raised security as a key “stress-point” and “huge challenge” in newspaper interviews; and at the end of May he announced that security minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones would be carrying out a review of Olympic security funding and planning.

Planning security for the Games involves 11 police forces, emergency services across the country, local authorities, and several government departments. The lead minister for Olympic security is the home secretary, while the Olympic Security Directorate (OSD) – made up of staff from different government departments and partner agencies – is responsible for overseeing and co-ordinating the work. It has commissioned lead agencies to deliver the 27 projects that make up the security programme, and led the development of an Olympic and Paralympic Security and Safety Strategy, published last year.

There has been progress in key areas, such as venue security and upgrading the Airwave system which emergency services use to communicate, but much of the work so far has been around analysing risks and assessing the gaps in resources and capability. This planning work has practical and legacy benefits in itself, says Huddart. Having led a detailed analysis of London’s city-wide capacity to deal with the specific risks brought by the Olympics, the LRP is ready to begin training exercises.

Despite the creation of the security strategy, uncertainties over responsibilities remain. A National Audit Office progress report, published in February this year, said that “important decisions on scope and costs remain to be resolved with the other delivery bodies with security responsibilities”. In particular, it highlighted the need for the Home Office and London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) to agree “the precise responsibilities, scope and costs for venues’ security operations across the whole programme, including the main transport hub and Village site at Stratford”.

Funding is also uncertain, and not just because of the pressures on all government spending. Currently, the OSD holds a £600m ‘funding envelope’ for ‘wider security and policing’, but it is not clear how this will be divvied up.

Keith Weston, senior research fellow in the Security Studies Institute at Cranfield University, sees this as a concern. He believes some of those involved in planning are not fully aware that much of their work will need to be supported by existing budgets. “Government needs to be honest about finances,” he says, highlighting this as a key area for the review to address so that planners are aware of the budgets they are really working to.

The uncertainty over funding may be contributing to another concern; one voiced by Steve Swain, chief executive of the Security Industry Technology Consortium, who was involved with security planning at both the Athens and Beijing games. He says agencies “need to get their procurements out pretty soon about what sort of things they’re looking for, because it takes time to get tenders out, to pick somebody and then for whoever gets picked to actually deliver what they need”.

David Evans, 2012 project director for the British Security Industry Association (BSIA) acknowledges that delays in procurement could pose problems, but says the UK Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers’ Community (RISC)’s Industrial Advisory Group on the Olympics, which he co-chairs, has been working closely with the OSD to identify the areas where procurement, capacity and capability issues may arise. “This year – to the end of 2010 – is absolutely key in tying all those [uncertainties] down so there aren’t those gaps in which your procurement ends up happening at the last moment,” he says.

Perhaps the main concern exercising agencies involved at this point is staffing. “One of the things we learnt from Sydney was that for every single role you identify, when you look at it over the 64 days [between the opening and closing ceremonies] on eight hour shifts, you’re looking at five people to do that single post,” says the LRP’s Huddart.

After all, the security industry will be needed across not just the Olympics, but also at planned and spontaneous gatherings around the country; regular events like Wimbledon and Glastonbury; and the various concerts, shoes and exhibitions which make up the cultural Olympiad. “To my knowledge there has not been a study made in previous games of all the events outside the main Olympics,” says Evans. “Anecdotal evidence says that it can be twice or three times the size of the requirement of the Olympics themselves.”

Assistant commissioner Chris Allison is head of the Olympic and Paralympic Policing Coordination team (OPC), a partnership between the Metropolitan Police Service and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) which is co-ordinating work between the police forces involved in the Games, and is responsible for delivering many of the 27 projects within the security programme. He recognises that the scale and duration of the Games, together with the number and distribution of the venues, will stretch police resources and logistics: “However, we are working hard to identify what the demand will be and to ensure we have the right skilled officers in place come 2012.”

Meanwhile, BSIA has worked with further education partners and LOCOG to develop a new stewarding NVQ and build a pool of staff to work at the events.

Amid all this, London will continue to go about its daily business, and the health and public services committee of the Greater London Authority is currently undertaking a review of emergency services preparedness for the Games, particularly looking at the way in which different organisations are working together, and the arrangements for sharing staff. After the first public meeting focusing on emergency response services, chair James Cleverly is positive about what they have found: “It all seems to be very thorough at this stage: most services said they were finalising details of where staff would be needed, volumes, how many and when,” he reports. “The next step is to make sure the next levels – LOCOG, NHS, local authorities and London-wide government – are as joined up as the emergency services seem to be.”

The signs are good here – much has been done to secure close partnerships between all delivery agencies. The OSD, ODA and LOCOG are all based in the same building in Canary Wharf, for example, in a simple but practical attempt to integrate working. Allison encapsulates the feeling one gets from speaking to anyone involved in this mammoth task, saying: “You can only meet the enormous challenge of the Games by working shoulder-to-shoulder.”

Allison personifies the way in which organisations are working together. He is the head of the OPC, an assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, head of ACPO’s Olympic Business Unit, and will act as national Olympic security coordinator during the Games – a central point of contact for the forces involved, including the government and LOCOG.

“Partnership approach comes down to people; you’ve got to bring people in with the right background,” says Huddart. Many staff have been seconded across agencies; Huddart himself from the London Fire Brigade. He adds that it’s vital for those people to communicate clearly and consider how their own work might affect other teams – and to take the step of informing partner organisations when cross-impacts are identified.

Everyone CSW spoke to was positive about the work that has been done to build partnerships. But the real test starts now: will the partners continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder? The final answer won’t be known until 13 August 2012, as the clear-up begins at venues across London and we can assess whether they have achieved their main aim. This, says Chris Allison, is delivering “first and foremost a sporting, and not a security event”.

Written by Suzannah Brecknell