West Yorkshire Police

Delivering safe and secure cycling events

Ensuring public safety at high-profile cycling events in the UK is essential to the continued success of the sport.

As the profile of the sport has grown and professional races and public participation events have grown, the demands on police forces to ensure that these are conducted safely, and with minimal disruption, have expanded.

On the back of their success in coordinating public safety efforts at events such as the Grand Depart of the Tour de France, the Tour de Yorkshire and the UCI World Championships, West Yorkshire Police has taken on a leading role in similar events across the UK.

These include the Tour of Britain, the Women’s Tour, Ride London and the Tour de Yorkshire.

In order to minimize the disruption to the public at any of these events the team have to create a virtual envelope around the race, closing roads and intersections ahead of the riders and opening it up once it’s safe.

This requires the deployment of up to 36 police officers from multiple police forces in a fleet of cars, on motorbikes and in vans, all connected to each other so they can operate seamlessly together.

Over the past five years West Yorkshire Police have worked with us to create a technology platform to enable this.

What value West Yorkshire Police gets from an analytics solution

West Yorkshire Police can collaborate with other police forces, ambulance, and fire services to ensure public safety. IT enables effective crowd control, predicting challenges, and coordinates 200 police. Spectators then gain an immersive experience of the race via a website.

The Tour de Yorkshire is now both safer and more interactive for spectators due to the visibility of police vehicles along the route. West Yorkshire Police coordinates vehicles from multiple police forces without needing to procure or implement any IT infrastructure. They can also track all vehicles and their locations in real-time, through a single-view interface. This is critical when managing an event of such a scale.

The public facing website serves to deliver an engaging spectator experience. It provides valuable information on road closures and openings to local businesses and residents, minimizing disruption.

‘There were some doubts as to whether a region like Yorkshire could manage a world-class sporting event of this size. The success of the Tour de Yorkshire and West Yorkshire Police’s work with its partners proved the region could successfully manage and coordinate a world-class sporting event,’ says Duncan Street, NPCC Liaison to British Cycling and CEG Commander, Protective Services Division (XA), West Yorkshire Police.