Security & Policing 2027: The Delegation Transport Brief for Farnborough

What Security & Policing 2027 is — and who travels to it

Security & Policing is the official UK Government global security event. The Home Office’s Joint Security & Resilience Centre hosts it, Total Events and ADS Group organise it, and the Department for Business and Trade partners it. The organisers describe it as the only closed event of its kind — established more than forty-four years ago, with no general admittance and every visitor and exhibitor subject to Home Office approval.

That single sentence is the reason this article exists. A closed event means badges are issued before travel, checkpoints sit between the kerb and the hall, and a driver who does not know which gate to use is not going to be waved through on charm.

The people who arrive here are, in the organiser’s own published visitor profile: Chief Constables and their force representatives, UK and international police officers and staff, the Home Office and other government departments, MOD departments and procurement heads, customs, immigration and border agencies, government security agencies, security managers for critical national infrastructure, emergency services and first responders, prisons and correctional professionals, resilience forums and major event security professionals.

Add to that the international delegations brought in through the UK Defence and Security Exports delegation programme, which exhibitors can book meetings into directly. Those are the movements we plan for — four to seven people arriving together, on a schedule set by someone else, with a briefing to reach on time.

Worth being straight about this: the organisers do not publish a headline attendance figure for Security & Policing, and third-party numbers that circulate online are not sourced from them. If you need a delegate count for a business case, ask the organiser directly rather than trusting a figure lifted from a blog. We would rather tell you the number is unpublished than invent one.

Three gates, and the one that matters for cars

Farnborough International sits just off the A325, reached from the M3 at Junction 4 and from the A31. The site has three named entrances, and they are not interchangeable.

• Gate F — Aerospace Boulevard, GU14 6TQ. Vehicle access. This is the gate Security & Policing publishes for cars. what3words: remind.clap.decreased.
• Gate A — Transport Road. Vehicle access, used by other events on the calendar. what3words: back.enable.double.
• Gate B — Trenchard Way. Pedestrian access on foot only, and the location of the coach and taxi layby. what3words: safety.homes.taxi.

The venue’s own advice is blunt and correct: do not follow a satnav all the way in. Type the venue name plus the gate letter, and once you see the brown Exhibition Centre signs or AA yellow event signage, follow those instead. Satnavs routinely deliver drivers to the wrong gate, and at a Home Office event the wrong gate is not a two-minute detour — it is a re-route around a live perimeter.

Security & Policing 2027 is staged in Hall 1. After passing Gate F, drivers and passengers need the registration badge ready for a checkpoint on the approach. Parking across the venue is free, with space for around 3,500 cars and eighteen EV charging bays — but free parking is not the same as fast parking on a peak morning.

Where taxis and chauffeur cars actually drop off

The organiser is unusually clear on this, and it is the single most useful line on their travel page: the free shuttle bus from Farnborough Main railway station drops passengers in the coach layby just outside Gate B on Trenchard Way, and taxis can drop off and collect passengers from that same location.

So the kerb you want is Gate B, Trenchard Way — not Gate F, which is where your driver goes if they are parking. If you are being dropped and collected, you never need to enter the vehicle gate at all.

The catch is that the layby is shared. Station shuttles, coaches and cars all use it, and it fills in two predictable spikes: the twenty minutes before doors and the twenty minutes after close. Our standing practice at Farnborough is to drop, clear the layby immediately, stand off-site, and return only when the passenger calls or messages. Nobody sits on that kerb holding a space, and nobody idles in it.

Bag search operates at the entrance, with fast-track for visitors carrying nothing. All attendees may be subject to randomised screening as a condition of entry. Practically, that means the gap between stepping out of the car and sitting down in a briefing is longer than the walk suggests.

Opening hours and the arrival window that works

Published show hours for 2027, with the drop-off window we would build into a delegation schedule:

Pedestrian access through Gate B opens from 08:00 on all three days, closing at 17:00 on the Tuesday and Wednesday and 16:00 on the Thursday. The Thursday 15:00 close is the one that catches people out: a delegation that has booked a 17:00 collection on the last day will be standing on Trenchard Way for two hours. We check the final-day close on every event we quote, because it is almost never the same as the other days.

Arriving from Heathrow, Gatwick, Waterloo and Farnborough Airport

By rail

Farnborough International is within reach of five stations: Farnborough Main, Farnborough North, North Camp, Frimley and Aldershot.

Farnborough Main is the one that matters. It sits on the South Western mainline to London Waterloo with up to six trains an hour and journey times as fast as 34 minutes. It is 1.5 miles from the venue — roughly five minutes by car. During Security & Policing the free event shuttle runs from outside the station, and that is a perfectly good option for a solo visitor with a lanyard and no luggage.

It is a poor option for a delegation of six with cases and a 09:15 briefing, which is why we get called. Farnborough North and North Camp are about ten minutes away by car; Aldershot, also ten minutes, has direct services to Waterloo and Guildford.

By air

The venue quotes roughly 30 minutes by car from Heathrow and about 50 from Gatwick — realistic outside peak, optimistic on a Tuesday at 07:30 in March. We plan Heathrow arrivals against the flight, not the clock, and track landing times so a delayed delegation is not paying for a driver who left. Our Heathrow transfer page sets out how meet-and-greet works on the ground.

Farnborough Airport (FAB) is immediately adjacent to the exhibition centre — one of Europe’s leading business aviation airports, and a genuine advantage for this event. A delegation arriving by business jet can be at Gate B within minutes of the FBO. We cover that handover in detail on the Farnborough Airport FBO transfer page.

By road from London

M3 Junction 4, then the A325. From central London the honest planning figure in March morning traffic is well over an hour, and the M3 eastbound return on a Thursday afternoon is worse than the outbound. If your delegation has a Whitehall commitment either side of the show, say so when you book — it changes the vehicle, the driver rota and the departure time, and it is much cheaper to change on paper than on the day. See our London chauffeur coverage for how we run those legs.

Moving a delegation, not a passenger

An airport transfer has one variable: the flight. A three-day delegation at a closed government event has about fifteen, and they interact. Hotels are spread across Farnborough, Fleet, Camberley, Aldershot and Guildford because no single hotel absorbs a party of nine in March. Briefing times move. Someone always has a separate Whitehall meeting. And the show closes early on the final day.

This is what we actually change when the booking is a delegation rather than a person:

How delegation and group transport is quoted

We publish per-mile fares for ordinary journeys, and we deliberately do not publish them for delegation, corporate group or roadshow work. That is not coyness. A per-mile figure describes a car going from A to B. It describes almost nothing useful about three days of standby, hotel loops, a flight that lands late and a Thursday that ends at three.

What actually sets the number for event work:

• Days and hours committed — whether the driver stands by between movements or is released and returns.
• Vehicle class and count — and whether the party genuinely fits one vehicle once the cases are in.
• Hotel spread — a single hotel is a straight run; five hotels is a routed loop with a schedule behind it.
• Airport legs — flight-tracked arrivals, meet-and-greet, and how long we hold for a delayed inbound.
• Evening commitments — receptions and dinners are the part most schedules forget until the afternoon of day one.
• Security requirements — advance driver details, fixed vehicles, no substitutions.

We come back with one inclusive figure per vehicle per day, confirmed in writing before the first movement. Dinez Taxis and Airport Transfers is not VAT registered, so the figure we quote is the figure you pay — there is no tax line added at invoice. If you would rather run the whole event on account and settle monthly, that is what our corporate account is for.

Quotes for March 2027 are worth having in hand early. Farnborough hotel stock during Security & Policing week is tight, and once your accommodation is fixed, the transport plan follows from it rather than the other way round.

Or speak to us directly: 01252 265051

A last word from the yard

We have run into Farnborough International for sixteen years, through airshows, trade weeks and government events, and the pattern never changes. The people who have a bad morning are not the ones who booked late. They are the ones who assumed a venue with 3,500 free parking spaces and a station five minutes away could not possibly be difficult.

It is not difficult. It is just specific. Gate F for cars, Gate B for people, badge in hand, twenty minutes of contingency, and a driver who has done it before.

— Dinez “Dino” Carnay, founder, Dinez Taxis and Airport Transfers