With festival and event season just around the corner, organisers across the North East are deep in the planning process. Venues are being booked, lineups are being finalised, and logistics are being locked in. But one element that should never be left as an afterthought is security.
Whether you’re organising a music festival, a corporate event, a sporting fixture, or a community gathering, getting your security right is fundamental to the safety of your attendees, your staff, and the success of the event itself. Here’s a practical checklist to help you plan with confidence.
1. Start Your Security Planning Early
Security should be one of the first conversations you have when planning any event, not one of the last. The size of your event, the venue layout, the expected audience demographic, and the nature of the entertainment all have a direct bearing on your security requirements. Leaving it too late limits your options and increases the risk of gaps in your provision.
Engage a professional security company at the earliest opportunity so they can assess your requirements and help shape your overall event management plan.
2. Carry Out a Thorough Risk Assessment
A formal risk assessment is not just best practice, it’s a legal requirement for most public events. This should cover potential crowd management challenges, access and egress points, emergency evacuation procedures, and any specific risks associated with your venue or event type.
An experienced security provider like T3 Security can work alongside your team to help identify risks and recommend appropriate mitigation measures before the event takes place.
3. Get the Right Ratio of Security Staff
There’s no universal formula for security staffing levels, but industry guidance and your local authority licensing conditions will provide a framework. As a general rule, the larger and more complex the event, the more personnel you’ll need, and their roles should be clearly defined from the outset.
T3 Security provides fully trained, SIA licensed security staff for events of all sizes, from intimate indoor venues to large-scale outdoor festivals. Their team has extensive experience coordinating multi-role deployments covering entry points, crowd management, backstage, and roving patrols.
4. Plan Your Access Control Carefully
How people enter and exit your event is one of the most critical security considerations. Poorly managed access points create bottlenecks, increase the risk of disorder, and make it harder to control capacity. Your security team should have clear procedures for ticket checking, bag searches, prohibited items, and dealing with refusals.
First impressions matter too. A professional, well-briefed door team sets the tone for the entire event experience.
5. Brief Your Security Team Thoroughly
Even the most experienced security personnel need a full event briefing before they deploy. This should cover the event schedule, key contacts, communication channels, emergency procedures, and any specific considerations relevant to your audience or venue.
T3 Security’s event teams are coordinated and briefed to minimise disruption and ensure seamless integration with your wider event management structure.
6. Have a Clear Emergency Plan
What happens if something goes wrong? Every event should have a documented emergency plan covering medical incidents, fire evacuation, and crowd disturbance. Your security provider should be fully integrated into this plan and know exactly what their role is in each scenario.
Plan Your Event Security with T3
T3 Security has been delivering professional event security across the North East and beyond since 2008. Ranked in the top 15% of UK SIA approved contractors, their fully licensed team brings the experience, professionalism, and local knowledge to keep your event safe from start to finish.
Don’t leave security to chance this event season. Call T3 Security today on 0191 284 4730, email info@t3security.co.uk, to discuss your requirements.