Guardian News and Media/London
Officers from nine police forces are being drafted in to fill the gaps in Olympics security following the failure of G4S to provide enough security guards for the Games.
A soldier patrols by a gate at the beach volleyball venue ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games in London yesterday
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has been forced to update MPs on the debacle yesterday as it emerged that hundreds of officers from forces across the country were being drafted in to work alongside the extra 3,500 military personnel.
Assistant commissioner Chris Allison, the National Olympic security co-ordinator, said officers from Dorset, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Northumbria, South Wales, Strathclyde, West Midlands, Thames Valley police and Greater Manchester had been deployed to provide security at venues in their areas.
In Manchester, police were forced to step in after only 17 of an expected 56 G4S staff turned up at an Olympic team hotel in Salford at the weekend.
A similar picture was emerging in the West Midlands, where the regional chair of the police federation Ian Edwards said the force had had to provide 150 officers a day to cover a hotel in Warwickshire where Olympic footballers were staying.
Edwards said: “The worst-case scenario is that we end up having to find another 200 officers for the security at the City of Coventry stadium, and we’ve yet to find out what the shortfall is in Birmingham. It’s chaos, absolute chaos. You shouldn’t lose your local police officer because of the Olympics. Communities are suffering because a private company has failed to deliver on a contract.”
Clive Chamberlain, chairman of Dorset Police Federation, said that although the army had covered for the majority of the shortfall in G4S staff so far, police officers were now being dragged in to fill the gaps.
“On a daily basis it’s a lottery as to how many staff are going to turn up. The best they have managed is 15% not turning up, and on the worst occasions they have been 59% down. It’s a fiasco, it’s an absolute debacle.”
The crisis has led to growing pressure on G4S chief executive, Nick Buckles, who faces a grilling by MPs on today.
The Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson yesterday said that Buckles should keep his job “for now”.
Asked if the G4S boss should resign, Robertson said: “No, not at the moment. G4S remain an integral part of the security plan. The last thing we want is a loss of leadership.”
Robertson said he believed the crisis over security had bottomed out and, pressed by members of the foreign media, who have arrived in London in large numbers to cover the Games, he denied the situation was a “national embarrassment”.
“There a scale from mildly embarrassment to complete disaster and this isn’t significantly embarrassing,” he said.
We all knew about the problems ages ago: mayor
Boris Johnson yesterday piled pressure on the home secretary over the Olympics security fiasco as he admitted that “everyone” involved in the Games knew there was a problem “ages ago”. The mayor said officials realised many months ago that there would have to be an “expansion” of the number of security staff at Olympic sites. His remarks directly contradicted claims made by Home Secretary Theresa May to parliament that she was told only last week that 3,500 troops would be needed as G4S could not deliver on its promise of supplying 10,000 guards. Johnson yesterday said May and her officials had been aware of the difficulties facing G4S for many months. “What happened was that around about December, January, it was recognised the sheer volume of security — the need — was perhaps greater than had been anticipated,” he told Sky News.
