The recent news of British Prime Minister, Theresa May’s commitment to an additional £44.5m in government funding to reinforce security at the UK’s border in Calais came during French President Emmanuel Macron’s first visit to the UK since his election in May 2017; when the two leaders met to discuss plans for a joint operation to manage the European refugee crisis and improve asylum claims processing at the French border.
The French and UK government’s aim is to prevent the creation of additional refugee camps in the channel port by investing in further safety and security measures as a chief priority. This investment will be spent on fencing, CCTV and detection technology in Calais and other ports along the channel.
In 2017 alone there were around 115,000 attempts to illegally cross the Anglo-French border from Calais, resulting in five recorded fatalities from crossing related incidents. The planned security enhancements will help to keep people safe and deter dangerous and illegal crossing attempts. UK fencing manufacturer and security experts, Jacksons Fencing, has commented on how to approach border security to effectively mitigate risk and prevent any further tragic loss of life. Jacksons has earned an enviable reputation over many years of manufacturing experience in the perimeter protection sector, developing products that have passed stringent testing by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) and Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) which culminated in the winning of a government tender to supply and install an earlier upgrade of security fencing and access control systems at the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais in 2015. The project was successfully completed in 2017, contributing to reducing fatalities which had amounted to 23 deaths in 2016.
Cris Francis, Jacksons’ Security Consultant comments “Busy crossing points such as the ferry port and Eurotunnel terminal at Calais need to be treated like any other high-risk commercial site.. With the high volumes of vehicle traffic and heavy machinery operating within these areas, it’s important to reduce risk by eliminating unauthorised access, as the consequences could result in serious injury or death. Investing in threat-specific, certified and proven high security products is of critical importance in these scenarios and, at a minimum, we would advise installing products that have been certified to an LPS1175 Security Rating (SR) from the Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB). Currently we are the only company able to offer LPS1175 certified fencing and gate systems from LPS1175 SR1 through to SR5 ratings and while our SR4 and SR5 rated products would be over-specified for the majority of the sites in and around the Calais terminals, they would certainly come into play in areas where surveillance coverage and manned response is difficult or where breach would lead to loss of life or cause catastrophic disruption to services.”
Jacksons Fencing designs and manufactures the highest quality perimeter security and access control solutions in the UK and its team of technical and engineering experts are readily available to provide support to the most complex and challenging perimeter security projects.
For more information visit www.jacksons-security.co.uk or contact security@jacksons-fencing.co.uk
