16/8/11

Dear Mr xxxxx

Official Complaint – Do Not Ignore

I write to complain about the way my friends and I were treated by your security staff on Friday night 5/8/11.

I arrived in my car at around 9pm. I had one friend with me in the car and we were meeting up with a group of people already staying at your campsite. A man who later claimed to be Head of Security told me that you were not letting in any more people. I told him that I had driven for 3 hours to get here but his response to this was simply “So?” By this time, my girlfriend had arrived at the gate and explained to the guard that I was here to stay with them and as they already had a pitch, it would not make any difference. He said that it was not pitches but head-count that was the issue. She asked if I could still come in to have a drink with them before leaving. He said that would be OK but I would have to park at the other end of the causeway. He told me I couldn’t park there overnight or I’d have my car towed away.

This is the point where it all went very wrong. I said, “Come on mate, of course you can let me in!”. Your guard immediately became very aggressive and started shouting at me “How can I let you in? Are you telling me what I can and can’t do?” He was trying to get his face right up to my window and my girlfriend actually had to stand in front of him to stop him getting to me! My girlfriend (who has had an SIA licence) asked for the guard’s name and badge number but he refused to give it. He was extremely irate by this point, telling her to F*** off back to her tent or he’d throw her off the island and telling me that I couldn’t even come in the bar now. This situation was getting completely out of hand so I drove away from the gatehouse and waited for my girlfriend to come over to me. We agreed that I should drive off the site to avoid any further trouble whilst we all decided what to do. I waited in a car park that was way off the site, past the military base and over the level crossing. We reluctantly decided that I would have to leave but that my girlfriend and her son would walk down to collect the provisions I had brought for them. In itself, this is a horrible situation to put somebody in. I was tired after the drive and your guards effectively told me to drive for another 3 hours. This is hardly conducive to road safety. While we were waiting, your guards came at least twice in their pick-up truck down to where we were waiting in the car. This is way beyond their remit. They should surely be protecting the site, not driving off-site to intimidate people. On their second journey, they parked directly behind my car and sat there for almost 5 minutes before driving off. If this isn’t trying to incite trouble, I don’t know what is. I had not come to cause trouble so I stayed in my car with the doors locked.

It was now around 10pm. I knew that my friends would not make it back on time, as the tide would be coming in around 11pm. I decided that I would have to drive back up to meet them. I pre-empted that your paid thugs would attack us so I set my phone to record what was being said. I am glad I did because what happened next was unbelievable. Three of your guards were waiting in their truck, near the military base. As I pulled up, I could clearly see that your guards had parked in the middle of the road (oblivious to the fact that there was traffic trying to pass and the road carries a 60mph speed limit) and all three had jumped out of their vehicle to intimidate my girlfriend and her 17-year-old son. There was a lot of shouting from both parties and I went over to try to calm things down. By now, it was obvious that these hooligans were not looking to prevent trouble but were actually trying to cause it. On the recording you can clearly hear me trying to calmly explain to the head guard (it was at this point that he made this claim), that this could have all been prevented if he’d just let me in to start with. There were acres of space and no harm would have been done. He seemed to have calmed down by this point but his two associates were revelling in threatening, goading and abusing us. They were telling my girlfriend that she’d have to “pack her F***ing stuff and get off the island tonight”. They were telling her that I couldn’t help her so she’d have to do it on foot. I told one of the guards that this was completely unreasonable and you can hear me saying to him “Can you stop swearing at us please mate?” His response to this was “I’ll f***ing swear if I f***ing like. This is my f***ing island and I want you off it so F you”. He should be ashamed of himself to use this kind of language in front of a woman. How would he have felt if I’d spoken to him like that in front of his girlfriend? I think we both know what the answer to that is. You can hear my girlfriend asking why they have left the premises, which they are supposed to be guarding. One of the guards say’s “We’re on a tea break”. When I asked the same question to the head guard, he said, “Rick told me to follow your Golf and Rick…and Louise have all got my back.” There are two other names mentioned which are not audible on the recording. You can hear my girlfriend asking to see the guards’ badges. You can hear the head guard saying “You look with your eyes, not your hands”. This was repeated 3 times. What he was actually doing was holding a card about 2 feet from her in the dark. Each time she tried to take hold of the badge to look at it he pulled it away and said the aforementioned. You can hear one of the guards say, “There’s only one way in and out of this island and if you try anything we’ll be waiting for you”. The head guard is even heard threatening her son, saying “What are you gonna do, little boy?” At this point the guard was poking the boy in the chest and there are 4 witnesses to this assault. We decided that we were not going to get anywhere and had to face the reality of a 3 hour drive back to Manchester in the middle of the night. As we walked away, you can hear one of the guards say “Enjoy sleeping in your car mate” and they were all laughing.

There are a number of issues here and I hope that we can sort this matter out without me having to take it any further.

Firstly, there was ample space for us to drive in and spend a night with our friends. We would have been sleeping in tents that were already there and I fail to see how “head-count” makes any difference. Your website gives reference to people sitting in the aisles at the cinema, but this would have hardly been the case as you had acres of space available. You could have comfortably accommodated another 200 people with ease. We are peaceful, family people, not a large group of lads. It was dangerous for me to drive back after having just completed a 3-hour drive. Indeed my girlfriend had to do some of the driving as I was beginning to fall asleep at the wheel.

Secondly, there is absolutely no way that a security guard should become aggressive towards a member of the public. These guards appeared to take delight in being “hard men” and using threatening behaviour. A young boy was assaulted by one of these thugs in this attack and this is a criminal offence.

Thirdly, once we were off your land then they had done their jobs. They came after us looking for trouble and intentionally intimidating us. This is crossing the line in anybody’s book, not least the SIA’s.

Fourthly, it is totally irresponsible to remove a woman and her teenage son from a campsite in the middle of the night and leave them potentially in the middle of nowhere. Security staff are referred to as “Customer Protection Officers” by the SIA and as such have a Duty of Care towards ALL members of the public and this duty was flagrantly ignored.

Fifthly, none of the guards would give their names or badge numbers. This is clearly in contravention to SIA rules, which state “Any SIA licence holder must display the licence clearly at all times whilst on duty” and “Any SIA licence holder must give their name and licence number to any other person who has reasonable grounds to request it”. If your guards are SIA licensed (it would be an offence for them not to be), then they have broken so many rules that they really should have their licences revoked. They are certainly not allowed to leave their premises to intimidate members of the public and neither are they allowed to use foul language (this is an arrestable offence). If you asked them to go and find my car then this also implicates you in this very serious matter. It has since come to my attention that 61 people were thrown off the island on the night in question. This tells me that your guards enjoy bullying people and if they get a reaction from anybody then they simply throw them off the island.

I took time off work to make this trip. During this time, I would have earned £120. The fuel cost for the trip was £60. Not to mention the distress caused to my friends and I. My girlfriend has been coming to Shell Island for years and she was in tears for most of the journey home. What should have been a really pleasant day was turned into a nightmare and I trust that we will be compensated accordingly. Being in a remote location does not give you the right to act outside of the law.

I hope that we can reach a satisfactory resolution to this matter. If not then I will not hesitate to contact the police, the SIA, the OFT and the press, both here in Manchester and your local press. I will also post a review and copy of this letter on every relevant website.

I offer my thanks in anticipation of a swift and satisfactory response and I look forward to finding out the names and badge numbers of the three guards involved in this incident.

Yours sincerely

The idea of a massive, semi-wild site is fantastic but I guess the scale of the site demands large amounts of business and unfortunately in this case it attracts campers of the lowest common denominator.