Report criticises company’s processes and thanks police for their support to make Olympics success

Two senior G4S officers have resigned over the company’s failure to provide the number of Olympic security guards it promised, forcing the police officers to fill in the numbers.

David Taylor-Smith, the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive of the company’s UK and Africa operations, and Ian Horseman-Sewell, Managing Director of G4S Global Events, resigned after the company’s board published a report on September 28.

The report said Chief Executive Nick Buckles should stay because it found no failures on his part. But the document pointed out the company did not adapt its processes to meet the scale and complexity of the Olympic contract.

“The monitoring and tracking of the security workforce, management information and the project management framework and practices were ineffective to address the scale, complexities and dependencies of the contract,” it said.

“Together this caused the failure of the company to deliver the contract requirements in full and resulted in the identification of the key problems at a very late stage.

“The successful execution of the contingency plan, including deployment of additional military and police together with a substantial contribution from the thousands of G4S employees who worked alongside them, led to a safe and secure games with continuously positive ratings on venue security from games visitors.”

John Connolly, G4S Chairman, said: “G4S has accepted responsibility for its failure to deliver fully on the Olympic contract. We apologise for this and we thank the military and the police for the vital roles they played in ensuring the delivery of a safe and secure Games.”