January

January is upon us. This is a time, like the roman god Janus, to look both backward and forward simultaneously. Looking back we see a successful festive period. Throughout the North West FGH provided security to dozens of commercial sites, businesses and late night venues and were at the forefront of ensuring a safe and merry Christmas and New Year for our clients and their customers alike.

Over the festive period client satisfaction remained high. Several venue managers in particular commented on the high standard of door supervision provided. While the country was crippled by snow the FGH team continued to function admirably. Client satisfaction remained a priority as the FGH Management team found themselves driving through snow covered roads on Christmas day to ensure staff could be in place on time. A special mention should also go to David Barnes, a staff member whose expertise in winter driving allowed for the smooth running of operations across much of Lancashire during the recent inclement weather.

With a new year we have also produced a new edition of the critically acclaimed FGH Chronicle. Packed with exciting articles and special offers this is the ‘must read’ feature of the festive season. The detailed provision of information in this literary masterpiece will keep you up to date with all the developments at FGH Security.

The New Year period is also a time for looking towards the future. At FGH we believe the future is bright.

2009 Summary

If possible 2009 was an even more exciting year for FGH than 2008 had been. This year saw our security guarding division more than double in size and saw several more acquisitions in the door supervision division too. FGH was also rewarded for its hard work with numerous new accreditations and with a prestigious national win in the Security Excellence Awards.

The security guarding division’s exponential growth led to the appointment of Dan Willis as Security Guarding Manager. Under his stewardship FGH acquired several major contracts including the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust and Greater Manchester Fire Service. This required an expansion of our already impressive internal training programme and a dramatic expansion of the number of our full time security guarding staff. The measures Dan put in place to accomplish this were so impressive that we were finalists for Security Guarding Company of the Year at the Security Excellence Awards 2009.

Our Door Supervision division also continued its expansion. New contracts in Manchester and Preston expanded our coverage of southern Lancashire and Greater Manchester. We also picked up several more contracts in Cumbria, most notable of these being The Roxy in Ulverston. The most significant development in this area, however, was winning the Best Practice in Door Supervision category at the Security Excellence Awards. This award made us officially the best door supervision provider in the country this year.

FGH’s constant striving towards excellence has also resulted in several new awards and accreditations. We have been awarded CHAS, a health and safety accreditation. We have also become members of the Aspire 100, an elite group of smaller security companies banding together to take on the big few.

FGH also continued its diversification and is now able to offer virtually any security based solution imaginable. Notable areas in which we began to offer provision during this year were alarm installation; CCTV monitoring and installation, and close protection.

This year has also seen expansion at our head office. We have opened our new training and conference room and are now able to provide fully in house training sessions in addition to the facility being available for other companies to hire. The FGH Chronicle has also gone from strength to strength with an estimated readership of nearly 3000. It has expanded to a regular 16 pages, although we recently released a bumper 20 page edition for the winter period and now features feature writers from FGH and the wider security industry. This quarter’s feature writers are Robin Barratt, internationally selling author of such works as Doing the Doors and FGH’s own Dave Taylor.

FGH Security has great plans for 2010 to be even more exciting than 2009. Watch this space for details.

2008 Summary

In 2008 the company expanded dramatically, acquiring several major new contracts and employing ever larger numbers of staff. FGH also used this year to begin the process of diversifying the services we offer. As such this year saw the establishment of our key holding and mobile patrol services in addition to the high quality services that we already provided.

In addition to diversifying its offerings FGH also expanded its core services considerably. Several new security guarding contracts followed in the wake of the White Cross Industrial Estate, which had been acquired the previous year. Most notable of these was the Kingsway Development, an ongoing building contract in Lancaster. This was the start of a truly dramatic rise in the size and in the already high quality of our security guarding division.

Door Supervision contracts also expanded rapidly during this time. In particular we expanded into southern Lancashire and Greater Manchester for the first time, picking up contracts in Bury, Bolton, Burnley and Manchester. In addition to this a major new contract started in Cumbria at Lakeland Leisure Park. This expansion was largely due to the considerable influence of Adam Tomlinson, Lancashire Operations Manager, who had taken over this post midway through the previous year and whose sweeping reforms later saw him become a finalist for Contract Security Manager of the Year in 2009. Expansion in Cumbria came from the hard work and professionalism of Cumbria Operations Manager Danny Geere.

The company’s rapid expansion also led to changes at head office. The most significant of these was the triumphal return of Dave Hassall as the new Marketing Manager. Dave provided new and exciting ideas and brought an even more dynamic feel to our head office. Not surprisingly several new contracts followed as a direct result of his involvement. In addition to this Dave Taylor was recruited as a Vetting Officer and to provide general support to the management.

The arrival of Dave Hassall also brought with it the inaugural edition of the FGH Chronicle, the company’s quarterly magazine. Initially this was eight pages long and was packed with exciting articles, special offers and interesting information about FGH. A far cry indeed from the drab newsletters put out sporadically by some other companies.