Derby's Lock On Security

In these troubled times where can you guarantee that security comes first, that life and limb will always be protected?

Your military base in Cheyenne Mountain ought to be high on the list. Or that top secret American installation, Area 51 - bristling with every detection aid known to man. And some that aren't. The President's plane, Air Force One, must be the safest object in the sky, with devices to deflect missiles, and survival gear that defies the imagination.

Saddam Hussein used to think he was secure in his bunkers, until America developed the capability to find and destroy them. He'd have probably been just as safe in a dirty little hole in the ground, which is precisely where you found him in the end.

We Brits bow to American supremacy in almost everything to do with safety. Ever since you started storing gold bars in Fort Knox we've looked on with childlike amazement. But no longer.

Today I bring you news that will have the Pentagon boffins scratching their heads in disbelief. Because the last word in security isn't American at all. It's British. And you'll find it right in the centre of England - in the city of Derby. Derby - a rather drab tribute to all that's non-chic, founded by the Romans, developed by the Saxons, industrialised by the Victorians and ignored by the rest of the country ever since.

So, all the more strange that the last word in global security is a multi-storey car park in Derby, which used to be plagued with muggers and hoodlums. But in the last six years there has been not a single break-in or a theft. Not one scratch. Not one smashed window. You drive in scanned by scores of watchful cameras. The tickets are bar coded. The doors are solid and electronic. And there are sensors in the floors where you park. The computers can sense a pin dropping. It's light, clean and completely crime free. And for once it's got nothing to do with American technical wizardry.

The systems that guard this car park were designed by a local tractor engineer who was sick of getting his car vandalised. So welcome to what is now, officially, the safest place on earth. If only there was a reason to go there.

By Ed Boyle