Assignments & duties
What is lone working?
Lone working in security is deployment without close or direct supervision or immediate support. Most static guarding and mobile patrol work is lone work, and it carries its own duty to assess and manage the risk.
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<img src="https://secureoptix.co.uk/glossary/lone-working/diagram.svg" alt="lone working — diagram from SecureOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk/glossary/lone-working">What is lone working?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk">SecureOptix</a>
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</figure>It is the normal condition of the industry rather than an exception, which is precisely why it gets less attention than it should. The risks are foreseeable: confrontation, medical emergency, and being unable to summon help.
The controls are mainly about contact. Knowing an officer arrived, that they are still responding, and what happens if they stop, is most of what a lone working arrangement consists of, and the escalation procedure is the part that matters.
Mobile patrol adds driving and unfamiliar sites to the same picture, which changes the assessment rather than only the logistics.
What goes wrong in practice
- Check-in systems that nobody actively monitors, so a missed check is noticed at shift end.
- Escalation procedures that depend on a control room contact who is not always staffed.
- Risk assessed for the contract generally rather than for individual sites with their own conditions.
- Officers relying on personal phones with no agreed procedure behind them.