£100k bill to keep staff safe
Around £100,000 is to be spent in the coming year protecting Stirling Council reception staff from the public - and from fellow workers.
Over the last three years there have been 13 reported incidents across eight council receptions one at each of Allan Water House, Endrick House, Raploch Campus and Teith House; none at Customer First, Lower Polmaise and Old Viewforth; but nine at Wolfcraig in the city centre.
There is, however, believed to be under-reporting, with some locations failing to record “low-level disruption”.
In a report presented to the council’s health and safety committee recently, infrastructure development manager Drew Leslie and asset manager team leader Tracey Mills said: “It has also been raised through the review group that there is also a large number of incidents from internal staff behaving inappropriately to reception staff. Each incident has been addressed appropriately.”
A risk management and health and safety audit carried out on all council office accommodation in the last few years had resulted in a design brief of solutions to mitigate risk - including from terrorism - being developed.
The two main areas of concern were said to be the headquarters at Old Viewforth and Teith House at Springkerse.
Major alterations costing £190,000 suggested for the former were deemed challenging to implement because it was a listed building, however solutions for latter were costed at around £100,000.
So far parking has been altered at Teith House to ensure public vehicles are kept away from the building - making it difficult for a car to be driven at the property.
However, a further review across all the offices highlighted issues with maintenance and supervision of panic alarms, improvements needed in CCTV coverage and issues with how to evacuate staff to a place of safety.
This year’s council budget secured £100,000 of capital investment to improve security at reception areas across the council’s corporate offices.
The report said risk assessments had also highlighted the need to implement a basic “two tier” alarm procedure, tier one being where a member of staff “feels uncomfortable or is having difficulty in resolving a situation” and tier two “when a member of staff feels threatened and needs to escape the situation to a place of safety”.
In 2016, the Observer reported a proposal to install a panic room at Old Viewforth reception, however since then a review group has expressed concerns that a lockdown could see other nonreception staff inadvertently walk into a dangerous situation and the plan is under review. A previous panic alarm on the reception desk, linked directly to the police station Randolphfield, had been deactivated due to the number of false alarms being raised.