Press

The Olympics and Paralympics - 25 Jul 2012

New item 08 Aug 2012

Day in the life of a GCHQ member of staff supporting the London Olympics

Read about the thoughts and activities of Henry, a member of GCHQ deployed from Cheltenham to London in support of the London Olympics.

Olympic and Paralympic Security

Securing the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games is a complex challenge for the UK’s Government, police and agencies and for the London Organising Committee (LOCOG). The Games, which are due to begin on 27 July and 29 August respectively, will involve 14,700 athletes from 205 countries competing in 26 sports across 34 venues. Ten million tickets will be sold for the two sets of Games.

Many agencies, including GCHQ are involved in making the Olympics and Paralympics safe and secure. We have had officers working on the Games for the last three and a half years and although the main focus of our operations is based in Cheltenham, we have liaison officers forward deployed alongside other Olympic law enforcement, intelligence and other agencies in London.

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic safety and security strategy sets out the vision, aims and objectives of the strategy that has been devised to achieve this goal.

The strategy aims to employ existing national security and intelligence structure and resources. These are to be used to identify threats to the Games and disrupt such threats.

For more information on what is being done to secure the Games, please see the Home Office’s booklet “London 2012: A safe and secure Games for all". More information can be found in the Home Office’s pages on “Planning a safe and secure Games”.

GCHQ’s Build Up to the Olympics

As part of our build up to the Olympics, a range of Olympic speakers have been invited to GCHQ. These have included inspirational wheelchair athlete Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Steve Cram, silver medallist in the 1984 Olympics and Andy Hunt, Chief Executive of the British Olympic Association and Chef de Mission for Team GB.

A demonstration in GCHQ by the Disabled Fencing Association has also been a feature, alongside a range of fund raising activities. These have included a relay marathon around the ‘doughnut’, which in addition to other events, has generated over £7000 for the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust and other charities.


Disabled Fencing Demonstration and Tanni Grey Thompson

GCHQ Press Office

For more information about this press release please contact the GCHQ Press Office

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01242 221491 x 33847

E-mail:
pressoffice@gchq.gsi.gov.uk

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