Security incident at the British Museum

Yesterday a member of the public was stabbed outside the British Museum main entrance on Great Russell Street. While it is not believed the incident was connected to the museum, due to its proximity to the site the museum was fully evacuated by staff before re-opening approximately an hour later.

While our first thoughts go to the victim of this terrible incident, PCS would like to pay tribute to the professionalism and hard work of our members at the museum who performed their duties to the highest standard under difficult and stressful conditions, ensuring public safety while speedily evacuating an extremely busy, and very large public space.

Incidents such as this demonstrate why front of house and security colleagues are vital to our museums and galleries and why PCS continues to advocate for those teams to be fully resourced and well paid across all of our sites.

For any members affected by this incident, we would like to remind you of the support available at Health Assured through your PCS membership:

The Health Assured telephone helpline 0161 836 9383 is available 24-hours a day, is confidential, independent and provides counselling and emotional support on family issues, bereavement, trauma and stress-related conditions. There is also access to an online health and wellbeing portal which provides well-being resources, including four-week programmes, videos and webinars and access to online counselling. To receive the user name and password email benefits@pcs.org.uk