Industry Focus
The “DIY” Changing of the Guard
Selco Launches Its Own “Do It Yourself” Guarding Solution as Part of Tooling Up Wider Risk Strategy. By John Wilson, Executive Editor
With its relentless drive for sales and the consequential and ever-evolving risks the high street faces, the retail sector is never allowed to stand still.
So, the logic must follow, security guards in potentially high-harm locations cannot rest on their laurels, let alone stand still in what has become a febrile atmosphere of increasing levels of violence and aggression targeting store colleagues and frontline officers.
Guards are a marmite proposition lauded when integrated into well-oiled and risk-savvy store teams, yet all-too-often lambasted as an expensive grudge purchase or merely "mall muscle", delivering little in terms of the return on investment.
Loss Prevention Magazine Europe has previously featured the dichotomy of employing external guards in retail in relation to their training and accreditation in an industry marred by low wages, high personnel turnover, and questions regarding the effectiveness and legal liabilities of in-store security.
According to security industry figures for 2025, hiring guards in the UK typically costs between £15 and £25 per hour, with rates increasing for specialised or high-risk services.
Despite retailers identifying guarding as their most expensive loss prevention outlay, many security guards are paid near the minimum wage as a result of complex sub-contracted arrangements, with morale among officers remaining low because of long hours, high pressure, and often violent situations.
The dichotomy deepens when it comes to the integration of officers into retail locations and the implementation of store policies such as "no hands on" or "do not detain" to avoid liability. This can confuse and frustrate guards whose raison d'être is to protect people and property, resulting in a reduced sense of purpose that contributes to a sense of disengagement in the prevailing low earn and high churn culture of the security sector.
While retailers spend millions on security to combat a £2.2 billion annual loss from theft, many feel unable to determine the true return on investment (ROI), questioning if guards are effective.
The presence of security guards can lead to lawsuits and bad press if they are involved in wrongful arrests or escalate conflicts with customers. In the Republic of Ireland, they are often the first target for defamation of character or wrongful arrest claims resulting in negative headlines and eye-watering damages fines.
Consequently, some retailers are now shifting towards technology and staff training rather than relying solely on traditional, low-paid security personnel, while others find that reducing security increases insurance premiums and vulnerability.
Selco Builders Warehouse
One such business has been Selco Builders Warehouse, which first opened its doors in Birmingham more than 130 years ago. Originally formed as Sewell & Co (Timber) Ltd in 1895, it is now part of the Grafton Group of companies and has grown into a highly respected trade-only builders' merchant with more than seventy branches spanning four regions in England and Wales.
Group head of profit protection and risk Dale Wetherson who joined the business in 2024 spent the first few months of his tenure understanding Selco's risk profile with a view to building a best-in-class and fit-for-purpose loss prevention function.
Joining the business from a retail background at NEXT, Dale, a former diver and keen mountain biker, wanted to quickly immerse himself in the challenges of the building merchants' market and get in the saddle of the new role.
"My new manager told me on day one to spend the next three months getting to know the business and make sense of it—he gave me a free hand to look at everything from CCTV to guarding," said Dale.
His first task was to conduct a strategic review of Selco's risk management strategy, particularly its existing contract guarding where the costs had run into millions of pounds—levels that Dale discovered exceeded the overall stock loss and shrink figure.
"I always knew the business was culturally different to my previous role where I was dealing with the fashion and home market. At Selco, the merchant market is focused upon the small business customer who are the life blood of the organisation," he said.
"They are often entrepreneurial and their motivation is different—they want to get the best deals possibly because it impacts their margin. This of course can impact the margin of our business, so we have to be more focused on the fact that we are in a sector under more financial pressure."
Despite that pressure, Selco as part of the Grafton Group, has outperformed the sector. As a Group it has seen growth of 11 per cent over the last year.
A former naval mine clearance specialist in the Royal Navy, Dale is well-versed in working in sensitive environments requiring him to tread carefully.
He recognised early on that Selco's CCTV systems were "not good" and in need of upgrading and that the contract guarding model in place was broken.
As Selco was not a traditional retail business set on the high street, the contract guarding model did not work on industrial estates.
His review revealed that there was no engagement or integration between the contract guards and the branch staff and the quality of some of the personnel was deemed poor. Many guards remained rooted in one location of the branch for the duration of their shift or engaged in carrying out other non-security roles.
He found that there was little in the way of security reporting, and it was felt that the guarding provision was not delivering value for money.
DIY Guarding Solution
The decision was taken by Dale with the blessing of the board to allow Selco to take the existing budget and "grow" its own internal security team as part of a strategy to save and re-direct money to future-proof the business.
"We retained five of the existing guards, but the rest of the officers have been recruited externally."
The business has currently engaged more than twenty personnel from its ranks, all of whom will provide mobile and static security duties across the estate. There are plans for at least another ten officers, all of whom will be provided with Selco branded uniforms and high vis jackets.
Although not SIA-accredited at this stage, the officers and new recruits will be provided with extensive development and training by specialists in conflict management, RISC Associates.
RISC Associates
"I have worked with Ed and Vince at RISC Associates, and they have provided us with bespoke face-to-face training which is thoughtful and considered from the senior team down."
Ed Dunne, managing director of the Wolverhampton-based training specialist risk management company said: "We have worked with Dale at his previous role."
"Moving to his new role, we were briefed to deliver a full bespoke training programme aligned to Selco's strategic growth and risk priorities," said Ed.
"In phase one the course was all about developing leadership skills and we delivered a customised programme for Selco's profit protection business partners which strengthened their capabilities in data analysis, leadership, performance management, coaching, and strategic objective setting."
"Phase two was about elevating operational capability. In December last year we rolled out a tailored course for the profit protection assistant teams focussed on core skills essential to today's retail environment. This involved profit protection standard operating procedures, key legislation, offender profiles, deterrence strategies, reporting, conflict management, and personal safety."
The course, which was also designed around current legislation, was delivered to profit protection officers as well as the LP partners so that the full chain of command is aware what the frontline security operators have been taught across the six regions of Selco's merchant estate.
"Training for a builder's merchant is completely different to the training requirement for a high street fashion retailer—there is the threat from items they sell for example, such as screwdrivers and hammers, so it's as much about learning from them and understanding the role and terminology when we are developing a bespoke course," he said.
"We're incredibly proud to play a role in enhancing Selco's profit protection strategy—empowering teams with the confidence, knowledge, and tools to reduce risk and improve safety."
"At the end of the day, loss prevention is about keeping honest people honest, but there will always be an element of society who will be dishonest," said Ed who prides himself on the face-to-face model adopted by RISC Associates.
"Before designing and delivering training, we visit the operational environment as part of our learning and understanding of their business—and it works because the feedback indicated a 98.8 per cent satisfaction rate," he added.
"We partner with organisations to design and deliver customised training that builds confidence, strengthens compliance, and enhances operational capability."
Technology
Working with Video Analysis Solutions and SGS, Dale set about introducing smart CCTV and data analytics.
The business has also started working with the Auror crime data sharing platform to build intelligence reporting to support their new model going forward.
"I knew that the security team would work well with training and support from RISC Associates and that the CCTV and analytics would deliver, but Auror was my big gamble," said Dale.
"We looked at data sharing platforms when I was at NEXT where it was bolted on to our relationship with the then NBCS. We spoke to Boots who had been using Auror for a year with thousands of offences being successfully reported and fed into police and Opal."
Auror
Auror is the crime intelligence software for retailers, focused on crime prevention, making stores safer for colleagues and customers, and reducing losses. The software which makes it easy for frontline teams to report actionable intelligence, leverages Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and Auror Subject Recognition (ASR) technology to identify and stop perpetrators, and connects repeat offending across multiple locations.
Overall, the objective of the Auror software is to distribute timely, relevant insights to help teams prevent crime safely and in real time. By doing so, it is the data glue that holds the profit protection function together, and through strong intelligence supports Dale's wider ambition to operate his own security team.
Mark Gleeson, vice president at Auror, said: "Dale joined Selco in 2024 with a clear brief: build a loss prevention function from scratch. He'd worked with another platform at his previous company, an experience that had been frustrating and ultimately let his team down, so when it came time to find the right partner, he knew exactly what he didn't want."
"Auror was part of his discovery process, and once Dale and his team saw what we could do, the decision was straightforward. We had our first meeting in September 2024, and by the first week of January 2025, Selco was live."
Not unlike RISC Associates, Auror explored Selco's specific industry requirements and worked closely with Dale and the team to achieve them.
Mark added: "That pace speaks to Dale's clarity of vision and his team's commitment to doing things differently."
"Dale came to us with a clear view of what wasn't working. First, intelligence was being missed. Information was coming through email, phone calls, and sometimes not at all. There was no consistent process, which meant the team was operating blind more often than they'd like."
"Secondly, threats and violence against colleagues were happening regularly in stores. They were logging incidents internally, but many were going unrecorded, and there was no way to identify who was causing the harm."
"Thirdly, concealment theft was a real issue. Offenders were hiding expensive items between bags of concrete, and it was hard to stop."
"Finally, Dale knew their offenders weren't just hitting Selco. They were almost certainly targeting similar retailers across the UK. He wanted a solution that could connect those dots and help the wider community, not just his own stores."
For retailers like Selco, Auror turns day-to-day incident reporting into a shared intelligence picture. Information that was previously fragmented across emails, phone calls, and local logs is now captured consistently and structured in a way that supports analysis, prevention, and evidence-led action across the business.
The platform enables the loss prevention team to identify the small number of repeat offenders responsible for a disproportionate share of harm, understand patterns of offending across the estate, and take targeted, proportionate action.
Mark Gleeson adds: "This supports Selco's shift from reactive incident response to proactive risk management. Auror helps retailers prepare consistent, high-quality evidence and maintain clear audit trails, supporting effective engagement with law enforcement and external stakeholders when required. This approach strengthens governance, insurer dialogue and leadership reporting without adding unnecessary operational burden."
Auror, which has offices in London, Melbourne, Denver, and Auckland now supports a growing retail customer base that includes many of the world's leading retailers.
In terms of the specific benefits to Selco within Dale's risk eco-system Auror has delivered three core shifts within the loss prevention operation.
"First, frontline teams are actually completing incident reports quickly and with better quality, which has reduced the admin burden and dramatically improved the data Dale's team can work with," said Mark.
"Second, the platform surfaces the small number of individuals driving the majority of harm, so the team can focus prevention efforts where they'll have the biggest impact and resolve cases faster."
"Third, we've given Dale's team police-ready evidence and full auditability through a GDPR-compliant platform, which supports not only day-to-day operations but also governance requirements, conversations with insurers, and reporting to leadership."
"Beyond operational improvements, Auror enables Dale and the c-suite to manage risk across their entire estate and make informed investment decisions based on comprehensive, reliable data. It's transformed Selco's approach from reactive to strategic," he added.
Since it was launched in 2025, Selco has rapidly built a strong intelligence foundation through Auror.
More than 1,000 known offenders are now recorded in the platform, giving store teams and in-house guards consistent visibility of repeat and higher-risk individuals.
That intelligence is being actively used, with over 15K profile and event views, helping teams to recognise known offenders which allows them to respond earlier. Analysis has also shown that just 10 per cent of the offenders identified by the platform are responsible for 72 per cent of recorded loss.
Mark added: "This has enabled Selco to focus on prevention efforts where they have the greatest impact."
"This targeted approach has already delivered tangible operational wins. In one case, a known repeat offender linked to over £14,000 of theft across a three-month period was repeatedly identified and prevented in stores. Since those interventions, Selco has seen no further recorded activity linked to that individual or associated offenders in the following three months."
Event volumes and associated value also increased significantly between the initial launch period and subsequent months, reflecting improved incident capture, richer reporting, and a clearer understanding of crime patterns across the estate.
The story continues to evolve in the relationship between Selco and Auror.
"We began rolling out Auror's ANPR integration in February which connects Selco's existing cameras to Auror's Crime Intelligence Platform, enabling the team to identify and prevent repeat and violent offenders before they even enter the stores."
"This adds another powerful layer of intelligence and prevention capability. Beyond that, we're focused on deepening collaboration between Selco, law enforcement, and other retailers across the UK to tackle organised retail crime as a community, rather than in silos."
And the integration of the different solutions is working for Dale.
"We could have seen a big spike in crime once we removed our contract guarding, but it is all working really well," he said.
But this has not happened purely because of the building better together approach. It was not about one element not working or being fit for purpose, but from a training, technology, and communication perspective it has always been about re-inventing, reconnecting and re-imagining what good should looks like after the various components are brought together.
Like Selco, itself, it's about providing the right building blocks on the right foundations.o.
