Liverpool One private security team, Merseyside, UK
Liverpool One was the original bogeyman in the controversy over newly "private" areas of UK cities, and its 17 hectares (42 acres) remain the largest urban slice to have services from security to street lighting delivered by a private company. How things have turned out in Liverpool One has huge relevance to London's post-Olympic developments. Broadgate Estates are shareholders in the project and staff from the capital have been up to Merseyside to look for tips about running such a large – and heavily used – wodge of a city centre. Their first impression will have been significant: almost everyone coming to Liverpool One is left unsure where its boundaries begin and end. "That's just how we want it to be," says Chris Bliss, head of estates for the complex of 30 major buildings, a dozen streets and a two-hectare park. He and his colleagues abhor the widely touted notion of a separate and superior community where anyone might be kept out. Why the private model, though? The attraction for both developer and tenants, says Bliss, is an area which can focus exclusively on commerce without the other distractions that beset a local council. Liverpool has rocketed up the UK's retail league table, from 14th to 5th place, since the complex opened; and there are other advantages in a tightly run, retail-focused operation. When London's street violence spread across England last August, Liverpool One had every shop window cleared of high-value goods, all potential missiles removed and a shutdown at 4pm so that Merseyside police could ring the area to deter looters. The area's own red-jacketed security staff, or "customer support officers", as Bliss and colleagues prefer to call them, were not in the frontline. "There was a time when all security staff were trained to stop people photographing litterbins etc because of terrorism but those have long gone," he says. "If our guys see someone taking pictures now, we want them to say: 'Would you like me to take one of you.'
Size: 5000px × 3333px
Location: Liverpool, Merseyside, UK
Photo credit: © EnVogue_Photo / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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