Festival Republic to host the fourth annual National 'Crime at Major UK Music Festivals' Conference

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 in Reading

National conference for UK music festival promoters, security companies, and police forces
 
Festival Republic will host the fourth national Crime at Major UK Music Festivals conference on 22nd February 2012 following on from the success of the previous conferences. Since the inaugural conference in 2009 the past conferences have proved invaluable in terms of sharing intelligence and communicating a strong and cohesive message to criminals that their actions will not be tolerated.

The aim of the conference is to review the crime encountered during the 2011 festival season, the actions taken and outcomes and to look forward to improvements and continued intelligence and tactic sharing for the 2012 season.
 
The conference is designed to provide a forum to share operational expertise and experience in order to work together to combat organised and strategic crime at music festivals. To that end Festival Republic is once again inviting key UK festival promoters who run large scale, professional festivals, their security companies and relevant planning, intelligence and operational officers from those local police forces to contribute.
 
The conference will be chaired by Melvin Benn Managing Director of Festival Republic and Chief Superintendent Andy Battle of West Yorkshire Police.

The speakers confirmed and topics to be covered include:

•    Detective Constable Mark Smith from the Metropolitan Police on “Operation Podium, the Metropolitan Police’s response to serious and organized crime at the Olympics”
•    Deborah Charles, Senior Trading Standards Office from Milton Keynes Trading Standards on the work of trading standards fighting counterfeiters at music events  
•    Detective Inspector Amanda Lowe from City of London Police on the work of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau
•    Paul Cook from Live Nation and Simon Battersby from Showsec on security at Download Festival
•    Police Sergeant Gary Tupling from Leicestershire Police on covert tactics and organised crime groups
•    Detective Constable Kevin Walker and Detective Constable Phil Lilley from Leicestershire Police on the recent prosecution of a major counterfeiter
•    Mark Yovich, President of Ticketmaster International on “Ticketing and the Onsale Crush”
•    Lynden Manning, Fraud and Special Investigations Manager from Barclaycard on combating ticket fraud

Representatives have been invited to attend the conference from festivals including Glastonbury, Leeds, Reading, Latitude, Electric Picnic, Bestival, Rockness, Download, Isle of Wight, T in the Park, V Festival, Womad, Creamfields, Secret Garden Party, Global Gathering, Hackney Big Weekend, Great Escape, Oxegen, Green Man, Sonisphere and Wireless.

The conference will take place on Wednesday 22nd February from 10am to 4pm at the Royal Berkshire Conference Centre at the Madejski Stadium in Reading. Festival Republic will cover the costs of the conference and it is free for delegates to attend.