ICC Wales recently hosted a Protect Duty roundtable to highlight the role that venues and event organisers play in ensuring that they are as safe and secure as possible for attendees.
Following ICC Wales’ Protect Duty Report, the roundtable was organised to galvanise the event sector’s response to the upcoming legislation.
The new legislation, which is also known as Martyn’s Law, will formalise the responsibilities and actions that publicly accessible locations must take to mitigate the risk of a terrorist attack. Read more here.
Roundtable findings
The roundtable featured a presentation on the findings of the Protect Duty Report, followed by an open discussion and smaller group workshops to explore ideas and hone responses.
Heather Lishman, association director of the Association of British Professional Conference Organisers (ABPCO), said the discussions had helped break down some of the uncertainty and trepidation surrounding the new legislation.
She added: “Protect Duty can sound quite formal and scary but, when you come down to it, to protect somebody should be seen as a very positive message – it’s a caring thing to do, to save people from harm. If, as all stakeholders, we collaborate and work out what are the potential harms together, then hopefully we can alleviate the risk as a team effort.”
Rob Eveleigh, managing director of Brightelm, said the responsibility for, and the cost of, increased security measures had to be carefully examined and that all mitigation had to be proportionate to the risk at any particular event.
He said: “Additional security costs should be factored in and passed on by event venues and organisers. There has to be a standard question for every event and that is: what is the risk? Being reasonable and practical in answering that question, we can’t ever protect against everything an individual might do. If we are making it everyone’s responsibility for an individual’s actions, where does that stop?”
Overall the eventprofs agreed that more work needs to be done to bring the events industry together to impact the Protect Duty legislation in a proactive way before it reaches the statute book.
Nancy Mollett, venue director at ICC Wales, said: “Having worked with Figen Murray on the creation of our Protect Duty Report, we were very keen to throw another spotlight on this important legislation.
“It was fantastic to see such a high level of engagement from everyone. It is in all our interests to take every reasonable step possible to mitigate the risk of terrorist attack, and to make our venues and events as safe and secure as they can be.”
