Greater Manchester Police is stepping up the fight against robbers with a new scheme aimed at making the county safer.
Operating alongside GMP’s long-established Vanguard operation the Safer Post Offices Initiative sees a partnership with Post Office Ltd.
Police officers will work with sub-postmasters to offer advice and guidance on security issues in order to deter criminals. Each branch will then be assessed and, if successful, will be accredited to the Safer Post Offices Initiative.

View the Adopt a Post Office GMP overview document

Wayne Griffiths and Kevin Ryan from the Post Office Security Team, have been panel members for a number of years now and Post Office has benefited from the networking and funding opportunities afforded to them by the panel in that time.

Initially, Wayne and Kevin worked closely with panel secretary Stuart Pizzey during his GMP Crime Reduction days to successfully launch the ‘Safer Post Office’ initiative at almost 300 branches throughout Greater Manchester. This scheme was a huge success, in no small way due to significant funding for branding and materials from the panel, and resulted in incident reductions of some 50% over a 2 year period in the area. Unfortunately, due to resourcing issues, the scheme could not be maintained in its original format and had to be discontinued.

Wayne currently works as a Security Programme Manager in the Post Office Security team and that includes responsibility for liaising with all law enforcement agencies nationwide to build up relationships and identify partnership opportunities, such as the Adopt a Post Office flagship scheme.

Kevin has responsibility for (amongst other things), managing incidents, liaising with Police post incident, visiting branches and cash depots for educational and audit purposes, and dealing with internal fraud cases, all within the north west, and some wider areas. 

Apart from the Adopt a Post Office initiative, Post Office Security currently engages in a lot of work around fraud and scam prevention, especially with a significant percentage of its customer demographic falling into the vulnerable and elderly categories. This includes participation in the ‘Banking Protocol’ scheme nationwide with all police forces and financial institutions. To date, this scheme has protected over £25m of customer funds from falling into the hands of fraudsters and scammers, likewise some 200 resulting arrests have been made.  

Post Office Security also has an ongoing partnership with Crimestoppers and has delivered a number of campaigns in targeted areas, with Police input, aimed at highlighting and educating the public as to the perils of falling victim to frauds and scams. These activities have been particularly rewarding and successful, and whilst not necessarily impacting on business bottom line, they demonstrate a moral obligation and willingness to protect our customers as much as possible.