Inside our specialist security and fire installation at Manchester Longsight

Police custody is governed by the Police Custody Design Guide, owned jointly by the Ministry of Justice and the National Police Estate Group. It sets the national benchmark for what good custody looks like, and we design to it as a baseline - but every force operates differently. Across the 43 forces in England and Wales, the principles are shared and the local detail varies.

We worked with Greater Manchester Police early in design development to understand how their custody teams operate and where the local detail needed to sit. The installed system meets the national standard and reflects the way GMP custody actually runs.

At Longsight, Tremorfa was appointed to deliver both the security and the fire installation under a single contract. For a force, that removes the friction of coordinating multiple specialist contractors across the same space. One team to engage with, one programme to manage and one point of accountability.

Both our specialist security team and our fire team sat in design development meetings from the start, working through sequencing and design decisions together rather than separately. On site, the two installations ran in parallel with the wider construction programme.

At the heart of the installation is Tasicca^®, our custodial platform that brings staff safety, communication and operational oversight into one integrated system.

Cell-side staff safety affray strips allow officers to summon immediate assistance during an incident. Cell-call intercoms link detainees directly to the charge desk for everyday requests, with intelligent call management preventing audio overload at busy moments. Entry intercoms manage controlled access into the building. A site-wide public address system ties everything together.

Layered over the top, the custodial CCTV and digital recording give full coverage across cells, charge room and ancillary spaces, with a fully integrated control room providing real-time visibility across the suite.

Every element was designed to complement, not complicate, the operational environment.

The biggest operational challenge on a refurbishment of this scale is environmental. Specialist electronic equipment, aspirating fire systems and server room hardware do not respond well to dust, debris and the general conditions of a live building site. Sequencing matters, but so does the ability to adapt when plans change.

Our site supervisor led the day-to-day installation, working directly with the other trades to keep our package moving through the programme. When a corridor was unavailable, work moved to another. When dirty works ran longer than expected, we worked around them and arranged the deep cleans needed before our equipment went live. Flexibility on site is not optional on a project of this duration; it is built in.

Good security is not only about what you can see. The containment, cabling and server environments at Longsight were delivered to the same standard as the visible equipment. On a 44-cell facility carrying integrated CCTV, audio, fire and aspirating detection, the infrastructure behind it all has to be ordered and accessible.

Because we maintain what we install, precision matters from day one.