Contemporary security best practice, 800 years of tradition, and a historic ‘first’ all formed part of a prestigious project for SAFECROWDS GROUP when we provided hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM) for the Lady Mayor’s Show in the City of London.
A centuries-old tradition, the Lord Mayor’s Show is London’s oldest, longest, and most famous civic event, which celebrates the newly elected Lord Mayor’s journey from the City of London to Westminster to swear allegiance to the Crown with a spectacular parade. The current ‘Lord’ Mayor is only the third woman to be appointed to the role in the past 800 years, so the most recent event became the first ever Lady Mayor’s Show, with Dame Susan Langley DBE, the 697th person to hold the office, taking centre stage.
With more than 7000 participants taking part from all over the world, the procession was more than three miles long, and the event required a co-ordinated approach to traffic management and security. The whole of the City of London was closed to traffic for most of the event day and the SAFECROWDS GROUP team worked with the event organisers, police, the local authority and delivery partners, including traffic management specialist, Quality TM, to co-ordinate delivery, installation and removal of HVM equipment in three locations.
The requirement was for pedestrian permeable HVM to provide vehicle attack delay standard (VADS) protection as part of a wider hostile vehicle mitigation strategy and installation. We specified and supplied our ARX Stopper! HVM system, which we installed in a VADS configuration.
The installation needed to be carried out within a two-hour window of the start of the event to ensure that it was in place prior to crowds gathering, but did not restrict traffic movements before road closures were implemented.
We then removed the HVM within an hour of the end of the event to enable traffic movement to get back to normal in this busy part of London.
The project is an example of the agile HVM services offered by SAFECROWDS GROUP and our ability to work collaboratively as part of a team of security and traffic management providers to ensure events run smoothly and safely.
