We've now got a situation where only a fraction of G4S staff have turned up for the first day of work. A hotel near where I work, which was supposed to be guarded by them as an Olympic lock down site, has had to have Police drafted in to cover it.
Yes, but is it worthy? On a more serious note. Like ARMANDII, I'm retired but I also work with companies employing security officers and know about the length of time it takes for the licence to come through. It's one of the biggest problems with recruitment in the industry - they find people suitable, start their training and then the person gets fed up waiting for the licence to come through. A similar problem also happens with CRB checks, although they have speeded up to sometimes getting them through in 8 weeks . They even had to get new checks done even if moving from one school to another. We used to do instruction in local schools free of charge but I got fed up trying to get the same checks done for each person when they were just going down the road to another school. I think they may have changed that now but we have already given up going into schools.
Isn't G4S part of the same company that, not so long ago, were allowing prisoners to walk almost willy-nilly out of the back of their prison vans? Nick Buckles may be '.. bitterly disappointed ..' but, as my daughters would say, puuurlees. Does he honestly think we believe he only became aware of this shortfall in recent days? I know of 3 people who applied to work for them: one is trained, checked and ready to go: one has been trained, CRB checked, got their uniform but is waiting for the security clearance, whilst the third (the husband of a colleague) has been CRB checked, got their uniform and their schedule of working hours but hasn't yet received a single second of training . If this is repeated throughout the company, then no wonder it's in sh*t state. And before anyone suggests Mr. B. should throw himself on his sword, it's worth bearing in mind that should he do so, he's in line for up to £20 million in salary, pension payments and performance-related shares! 'London 2012 - One extraordinary year'? Well, they say that again!
My only direct experience of G4S comes from those glorious days when the MoJ looked around for a house they could turn into a sort of unsupervised mini bail hostel and thought 'yeah, shove it next to the Claralou family. They're obviously a bunch of skanks, so they won't notice a few more crims next door.' We soon got to know G4S. They turned up in a little red car in order to 'tag' the tenants. Whenever one or other of their clients missed a curfew, back they would come to knock on the door. It was a total waste of time, of course. They had no powers to force their way in and, even if our neighbours did happen to be in, they weren't - surprise surprise - very keen to answer the door. So the three G4S staff (they always came in threes, just in case) would then return to their little red car and sit there chatting for ten minutes before driving away. They'd return a little while later and go through the whole procedure again. It struck us as a complete waste of time, and an expensive one. It wasn't doing anything to ensure the compliance of offenders or the safety of their neighbours (the overstretched local police still had to do the dirty work), but I'm quite sure it was a nice little earner for G4S. Three people, emergency call out on a very regular basis ... I wonder how much that cost the taxpayer? I felt this was yet another instance of stuff being farmed out to the private sector just as a way of passing the buck and saying that things were being 'dealt with'. I'm not surprised that the contract for the Olympics has gone sour and personally I'm relieved that the army is getting involved.
I agree that such a large contract should never have gone to G4S. There wasn't a dogs chance that they could recruit enough staff that were able to do the job, and get them all licenced - and the Olympic committee should have known that. So I agree that there was either massive incompetence, or greed, or another possible agenda - or a combination of all.
Me too, i wonder if it was a G4S person that tried to kill that kid on the bike near the torch If thats what they call security anyway they can keep it at least the army dont have that failed SAS mentality!
I know they are going to smack GS4's bottom this afternoon. When is it going to be the Home Office's turn to get a leathering?
Nick Buckles is not the only Senior Manager to blame in G4S. He is the CEO but no one man can run a company that size, he takes advice and note from a team of Senior Managers who will now be cowering in the Corporate Shadows so let's not get fixated on just one person within G4S. G4S has become a monster of a Company swallowing up other Security Companies with some success and some failures. It was the first Company to take on Court Security, the transport of Prisoners, and private prisons in the 90's. The Securicor Managers were rubbing their hands with glee when, initially, G4S had a string of embarrassing incidents of escapes on the way to court and in the actual court. The merger of both companies just made the Senior Managers want to become even bigger, and a lot of National and Global companies were, and are, impressed with the size of the company. G4S has pursued a policy of taking on the whole security services for such companies whereas in the past those companies would use local Security Firms who could use local resources and recruit locally more efficiently, replace staff more quickly, while keeping a close client relationship. It all comes down to a hungry, motivated, slick, Sales department and a relationship of Senior Management with the Government Departments. I have never understood why the Government [of any colour] will disregard the need for higher quality services in pursuit of cutting the professional emergency services. The resulting lower quality service is more expensive in the long run because it is ineffective, as Claralou has observed, and can actually put the public at risk. The thought of a private security company taking on the responsibility of neighbourhood patrols, as suggest by the Government, makes me cringe. The Industrial and Retail Companies have used Security Companies with reasonable success. But the reputation of a company can be marred greatly by one individual and it only takes a uniform to give an ill informed, bombastic, overbearing and self important individual the feeling of a God like power which doesn't exist except in his/her mind. Having said all that there are a lot of good Security Companies out there along with a lot of good Security Officers so let's not point the finger at them. The past and present Government has a lot to answer for in pursuing a privatisation policy over the years. Cutting costs is fine so long as quality of service, professionalism, and the safety of the public is not put at risk, and, in my humble opinion, that's exactly what's happening.
Iwas a Civil Servant in the late '80's - working for the Property Services Agency.It was a Govt. Dept. responsible for building, maintaining all Crown property, whether owned, leased out or occupied by Servants of the Crown. It included RAF /USAF sites, the Naval Docks and places where high security work eg. GCHQ was carried out. I worked in Works Bills( paying Contractors big money for their Contractual Work). When it was deemed that there was no longer any need for PSA,( good old Maggie) the work was farmed out to private contractors. They got in the "lowest bid" guys to do the work in all those places that I've mentioned. And that's when the bad apple in the barrel got busy. And it 'ain't stopped since.
Yes, quite how simply choosing the company which makes the lowest bid regardless of its shortcomings was supposed to drive up standards is something I've never understood. A few years back, the MoJ worked through a private company to set up accommodation around the country for offenders on early release - which is how we got landed with a crims hostel next door. (If you have a buy-to-let next door, be afraid. There is absolutely nothing to stop this happening and you don't even have the right to know in advance.)The company which won the contract had no experience of dealing with offenders, unless you count some of the more boisterous customers who patronised its core business - a holiday caravan site on the Isle of Sheppey. Can't you just picture the scene when that lot won the contract with the MoJ? 'Oh yes, guv, we're awful experienced at dealing wiv crims - I mean, vulnerable, alienated people on the margins of soci'ty wot are misunderstood and victimised. We see it all down on the Shangri-La Luxury 'oliday Village. Why, only last week we stepped in to break up a very ugly scene down the Sheppey Sunset lambrini cocktail pool bar after a young lady 'ad her bikini bottoms nicked from the line outside 'er carava .. I mean, luxury chalet. Offenders is no problemo to us, guv.
And our powers that be were so **** GULLIBLE. How do they get to be paid so much for the lamentable quality of service they provide for us? Sorry, little rantette over, jenny
Bids by companies are sometimes something of a foregone conclusion when large companies are competing against smaller ones. Government departments are just looking to off load the responsibilities of certain things and have no real experience of the actual service being put up for bids. So with Government departments being pressured to cut back they look to what they think is the most capable i.e: the biggest. G4S has had it's foot in the Government's door for well over 10 years, with the consequential privileged position, sucking up every contract in every area of local and national government, that has led to global and national Industrial/Retail companies following suit, to the detriment of of quality of service. This incident is probably just in time to prevent G4S having total control of Governments services in the areas where they are interested and will hopefully curb it's desire to do so...............but knowing the blind naive incompetence that our Civil Service and Politicians can demonstrate I'm not all that optimistic.
I maintain that nothing on t'interweb warrants 144 pages. Anyone who has time to read 144 pages off a computer screen has too much time on their hands.
I worked in a very large Gov building, full of computers and the details of every person in the UK The Gov dismissed the Gov security and a private group took over One night last year, with the building empty and locked up just the security there The young security men decided around midnight, to go to Maccie Ds for a burger, then pop along to the nearest nightclub for a bevvie So they opened a rear fire exit door, and propped it open with a fire extinguisher, whilst they went on their midnight munchie jaunt. They were only caught because one thought the other had made the security check report to HO, Bye that time all hell had been let lose, but the building had been open to anyone for a couple of hours So much for Private security firms, it is not just background checks, but loyalty and honesty and a proven track record are more important http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/s...urgers-off-and-leaves-ho-open-86908-21426601/ Jack McH
