Boss of the firm paid to patrol Essex town says it’s like choosing private healthcare over the NHS, but police and residents have concerns

Just outside the town of Frinton-on-Sea in Essex, three older people in hi-vis vests stand by the side of the road. One is empty handed, the second holds a notepad, while the third has a radar gun. “Pensioner vigilantes,” grunts a cab driver.

For a place where 39 crimes were recorded in August, Frinton takes its security seriously. Residents have started paying £100 a year to hire private security guards to patrol their streets – a move that has divided locals and drawn criticism from the county’s police and crime commissioner.

Private security firms have long patrolled the streets of London’s moneyed enclaves, but with forces facing steep cuts across the country, more areas are now starting to hire their own patrols – raising fears of vigilantism and a two-tier police force.

Those are criticisms that Stephen Beardsley, the owner of AGS Security which runs the patrols, rejects. “At the end of the day we are not the police, we are a security company and the thing I would say when people say they shouldn’t pay for you, or that you are a vigilante group: we are not a vigilante group, we are not a protection racket, we are not related to the Kray twins. We’ve got a great NHS service, it’s the envy of the world, but you still have the choice to go private.”

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Frinton’s police station closed 20 years ago and the nearest, in nearby Walton-on-the-Naze, is also set to be closed and sold by Essex police due to spending cuts. This means Frinton’s nearest station will be in Clacton-on-Sea, more than 10km away, where the crime rate is much higher.

Essex police is facing steep cuts that will have a dramatic impact on its workforce. The government is to slash £60m from its grant to the force by 2019, on top of £40m of cuts since 2010. At the moment, the force spends 83% of its budget on people, meaning that there are few other areas where the axe can fall.

These are cuts which have worried the people of Frinton, where the local council has part-funded its own six PCSOs for several years. It is a town with a lot of retirees, many from London or nearby Chelmsford, who have sold up their family homes and are looking for a quieter life. It is also a town with an odd, historic division: “inside the gates”, which is by the sea; and outside, which is on the other side of the railway tracks.

For the past two and a half months, AGS security guards have patrolled the streets inside the tracks seven nights a week, from 7pm until 7am, with 300 residents paying the £2-a-week subscription rate. They drive in yellow and black chequered 4x4 vehicles, looking out for any suspicious activity. If they see anything untoward, they call the police.

Beardsley is clear that they have no powers beyond an ordinary citizen – but that does include the ability to make a citizen’s arrest. They are applying for accreditation with the police, which they say will give them greater powers to tackle anti-social behaviour, take down names and addresses, and liaise with police intelligence.

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But Essex’s police and crime commissioner, Nick Alston, is critical. He said: “It is not for me to say what residents should or shouldn’t do, but I do have concerns that residents in relatively low crime areas are considering funding private security patrols.

“It has the potential to create a two-tier policing system. I would prefer that all of us who are residents in Essex pay a responsible amount for policing through our council tax.

“For example an extra 50p per week would fund an extra 300 officers in Essex working on behalf of the whole community, and not just those who can afford and are prepared to pay considerably for private security.”

Some residents also have fears about the service, particularly its irregular nature. One woman in her mid-40s out shopping in Frinton, who declined to be named, said: “It begs the question, who are these people sitting in the van? Particularly late at night.

“It’s a fairly safe area, I don’t feel that you are unsafe, but at the same time when you see people sitting in a van and they say hello to you and they say they are security guards, who are they? Just because they’re in a van doesn’t mean they are safe.”

David Foster, chairman of the Frinton in Bloom society, took a measured view: “It might be the way forward in the future because if we lose out PCSOs people might feel that they fill the gap, but it’s an individual choice really. Some of the businesses in the past have paid for security, and I believe that if you were to interview them people who joined so far, they have had some success.

“If there’s a need for something, it will survive; if there is not it won’t. Is there a need for it? Time will tell.”