While many of us shop online today, shopping centres are still a vital part of UK retail culture. If you are in charge of a shopping centre, you’ll know how challenging it can be to keep the place secure. To help you find the right steps to improving shopping centre security, this guide will give you actionable tips you can put into place quickly.
These tips are brought to you by a Doncaster Lock & Key locksmith with years of experience in commercial security. By the end of this guide, you should feel far more confident in making your shopping centre far less of a target for vandals, criminals, thieves and robbers.
Why Shopping Centres Need To Take Security Seriously
In the UK, we have more than 680 different shopping centres. Yes, retail has increasingly moved online, but shopping centres are still a vital part of our economy. With around 2.85 million people in the country employed in the retail sector alone, shopping centres are essential to our towns.
However, shopping centres also bring a large number of people into the building. Not everyone who comes through your shopping centre is here to buy something, though. Some might simply be passing through, as many shopping centres are in locations where people need to travel through to get from point A to point B.
Sadly, others come through your shopping centre looking to steal, vandalise, or get into altercations. That’s why, as a shopping centre manager, you need to take security very seriously. While it’s almost impossible to plan for every incident, and also some criminals will act regardless of deterrents, you can reduce many criminal activities by putting the right barriers in place.
As a locksmith, I’ve seen many shopping centres significantly reduce their crime rates. To do so, they applied some common-sense security measures that made most petty criminals and delinquents stop in their tracks.
Essential Security Measures To Make Shopping Centres Feel Safe
Nobody should walk into a shopping centre and feel at risk of being attacked, robbed or harmed in any way, shape or form. That includes staff, shoppers, visitors, and anyone else passing through.
My advice to any shopping centre manager would be to ensure that the following security measures are in place:
Invest In Experienced Security Guards
In the world of personnel-based security, you get what you pay for. Hire a cheap security firm, and you are more likely to get cheap security results. That means lots of actions missed, increased shrinkage and generally less positive results. If you’re paying security staff to keep your centre secure, make sure they are worth it!
It might cost you more per month to hire a more reputable firm, but the results pay for themselves over time. Security guards should always be on patrol; I’ve seen one too many groups of security staff just standing with their hands in their pockets, waiting for a call to come in. Good security staff are proactive and seek to prevent crime before it happens, not simply reacting to shop callouts.
Make sure your security guards are experienced and take pride in their work. Avoid hiring security staff who seem to spend most of their time conversing with shop staff or just wandering around. Proactivity over reactivity is an essential attribute in a high-quality security guard.
Upgrade Your Security Cameras
Many shopping centres rely on security cameras that were fitted years ago. That means the picture is not high enough quality, recording features are limited, and access can be stifled because it is only available from one security point in the shopping centre.
Modern smart security cameras provide easy access throughout the shopping centre. These can also give staff immediate notifications of any motion detection that seems risky, or of any areas where people are detected where they shouldn’t be.
Higher-quality security cameras give your staff more features, more recording capabilities, and higher-resolution images. It’s worth upgrading your cameras and pairing them up with other alarms and sensors so your security team always have reliable images to use as a second set of eyes.
Improve Security System Positioning
Another useful thing you can do is make sure that cameras, lighting and alarms are regularly checked for efficiency. You might find that there are certain blind spots or dark areas in the shopping centre that need to be addressed. You may also notice an area with lax security, so you can have your security department deploy more staff here during the day.
Criminals will also look for areas with minimal lighting, visibility, and security personnel. If you make sure everything is equally secure and staffed, most criminals will think twice.
Focus On Staff Awareness Training
Security guards are obviously very important, but you also need to know that shopping centre retail staff are safety-minded. The best way to do that is to invest in awareness training for all centre staff. You may not own the businesses that rent out shop floor space in your shopping centre, but you are responsible for limiting crime and keeping people safe.
The best way to do that is to get everyone involved in the act. Awareness training is a valuable skill for all staff, and it could encourage people to both apply for jobs at your shopping centre and stick around for the long term. It means staff are more likely to know how to respond in a situation that, without training, could escalate into a serious issue.
Increase Security Personnel During Busy Periods
Finally, I would highly recommend considering having temporary security personnel you can bring in during busy periods. That could be one or two extra weekend staff members, or an extra group of staff who work in your shopping centre during seasonal periods, such as near Christmas. As footfall increases, make sure your security personnel and parameters increase as well.
Having more staff on hand – good staff, mind, not just the first person you can find available – will ensure your current security team isn’t overloaded. And if you have a permanent selection of well-regarded security staff and up-to-date security equipment in place, seasonal and temporary staff can quickly get up to speed on how you do things.
You can also ask staff to be even more focused on potential issues during these busier times. This is when shopping centres tend to attract larger crowds, meaning more opportunity for thieves to blend in and for groups causing antisocial behaviour incidents to appear. The higher the footfall, the more staff and focus you need.
Keep these ideas in mind, and you should find it easier to make sure your shopping centre is more secure. Small changes can make a significant difference, so it’s worth investing in.
I’ve seen many shopping centres improve their security results simply by making these adjustments, so consider following their lead and, of course, get in touch with our team at Lock & Key if you need help implementing security upgrades, such as cameras and alarms.