Colleges and universities
Open sites, many buildings, and people who are rarely in the same place at the same time.
Estates, security and compliance teams in FE and HE
Where the estate is the problem, not the building.
A college or university has the same incidents as a school and almost none of the same conditions. The site is open to the public, buildings are spread across a town, students and staff are on different timetables, and there is no moment when everyone is in one place.
There is also a tier difference that matters. Further-education premises are standard duty premises regardless of expected numbers, because Schedule 1 places them there. Higher education has no such carve-out and is tiered on the ordinary test, so a large university building expecting 800 or more can fall into the enhanced tier — which brings measures, a document for the SIA and a designated senior individual.
What a campus deals with
Open access
People on site who are neither staff nor students.
Building-specific incidents
Where a campus-wide response is the wrong response.
Lone and late working
Labs, workshops, libraries, estates teams.
Halls of residence
Which are homes, with everything that implies.
Events and lettings
Sometimes crossing the qualifying-event threshold.
Bike and equipment theft
The most frequent incident by a distance.
Dispersed security teams
Who need mobilising rather than phoning round.
Legacy systems
Different ages and manufacturers across the estate.
Reporting
To an audit committee that asks for evidence.
Scale without noise
Scoped response
Alert and secure one building rather than a campus-wide action nobody can act on.
One console across the estate
Including, where sensible, third-party cameras via a Command Connector licence per channel.
Roles by faculty or building
So a building manager sees their building and nothing else.
An audit trail
Which an internal audit function will eventually ask for.
Six things to settle with your own advisers
- Which buildings are expected to hold 800 or more people at the same time, from time to time.
- Whether any of your events are qualifying events in their own right under section 3.
- How residential accommodation is treated across the estate.
- Whether commercial lettings change the expected numbers for a building.
- Who is the responsible person for each premises.
- That FE and HE are treated differently, and a mixed institution may be both.
Questions from people in your position
Are we standard or enhanced tier?
Can we keep some existing cameras?
Start with a survey, not a quotation.
We walk the site, look at what you already have, and tell you what would genuinely help — including where the answer is that you do not need anything.
Book a free site survey Call 01727 822 833Tell us about the site
Send us a few details and an engineer — not a call centre — will come back to you within one working day.
This is not a monitoring centre
If you are dealing with an incident now, call 999. This line is monitored during office hours.