A SECOND SPECIAL POLICE TRAINING EVENT BETWEEN POLICE AND INDUSTRY WAS HELD IN SCOTLAND
The Combined Industry Theft Solutions (CITS) group, in partnership with police and industry partners, held a second special police training event in Scotland. The event held on the 23rd of April took place at Kelso racecourse.
On the 23rd of April 2026, police and leading security experts from industry came together for another day’s training event in Scotland, this time at Kelso racecourse. The event was opened by CITS Chairman and the Clancy Groups’ head of security, Ian Elliott, and Andrew Huddleston, lead of the National Construction and Agricultural Theft Team (NCATT).
As part of the day, input was given by specialist officers including, PC John Cowan, Rural, Acquisitive and Business Crime Preventions Team, DS Chris Piggott, UK’s international police liaison officer and Police liaison officers of the official CESAR security registration and marking Scheme. There was further input from Kirsty Hyslop of NFU Mutual’s vehicle crime and MI Specialist, John Mussett, Director of Investigations at CanTrack Global, and Dave Byng, UK Head of Security of Balfour Beatty.
The event welcomed over 70 police officers from regional and specialist police forces within Scotland. These invaluable events are aimed to highlight current threats and the importance of working in partnerships to tackle crime, in particular to the construction and agricultural sectors. The events were also supported by the Home Office industry scheme, CESAR.
Officers also had the opportunity to learn about the latest RAPID. RAPID (Registered Asset Police Information Database) is a web-based search tool designed to significantly enhance the speed and efficiency of plant and machinery identification. RAPID enables officers to access the CESAR Database - which contains over 700,000 registered assets - directly from their smartphones, allowing for quick identification of stolen property and swift progress in investigations. To date, there have been over 30,000 checks carried out by almost 2,500 registered police users. This has resulted in almost 2,000 stolen assets being identified.
Kevin Howells, CEO of Datatag ID – which is the delivery partner of the CESAR Scheme - explained:
“We developed RAPID in order that every officer in the country could have quick, secure and easy access to the CESAR and Datatag marked assets databases - putting this information in the hands of so many officers makes life very tricky for criminals, something the results to date show clearly. We are fully behind the CITS and its training programme which brings hundreds of officers up to date with the developments in the CESAR Scheme and how they can access RAPID.”
Kirsty Hyslop commented on the success of the day:
“These CITS training days are exceptionally important in tackling Agricultural and Construction vehicle crime, they highlight the strong partnerships across Police, industry and other stakeholders in working together to combat these crimes providing the attendees with new skills and resources to help them carry out their roles, we are very proud to be a part of this.”
CITS, an industry forum comprising of representatives from the Home Office, Police, Insurers and Industry will continue to host a series of further, free to attend, police only training events in 2026.
The next training event will take place on the 20th of May at Newforge, Ireland.
Officers should register their interest for future events, with faye@cits.uk.com.
Further details can be found on the CITS website www.cits.uk.com
