Screening For Events And Festivals

A field, a fixed licence condition and a gate that opens whether you are ready or not. We hire out over 300 systems, install them ourselves, and stay for the duration — across a UK summer season with zero installation issues.

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What You're Actually Trying To Stop

Event screening is a throughput problem with a detection requirement attached, and the order matters. Get the flow wrong and you build the very crowd you were trying to protect.

Bladed weapons — the realistic UK event threat, and what your archways should be calibrated for.
Mass-casualty items — the low-likelihood, high-consequence case that justifies the search regime existing at all.
Drugs and prohibited items — a policy decision as much as a detection one; tell us your policy and we'll tell you what enforces it.
Weather, mud and power — the practical enemies of event screening, and the reason equipment choice matters as much as detection spec.

A long row of walk-through metal detectors under a marquee at a UK music festival gate — Festival gates: archways lined up, powered and tested before the first visitor arrives.

Our recommendation

What We'd Bring To Your Gate

Everything arrives prepared, tested and ready — because the workshop that maintains this fleet all year is the same one that loads it onto the truck.

Battery Archways

Weatherproof walk-through detectors running on quick-swap batteries for around 8 hours cordless, and available on castors, so gate position isn't dictated by where the power is.

Archways →

AI-Assisted X-ray Lanes

Automatic threat flagging so one lightly-trained operator can run multiple lanes at a consistent standard — the answer when qualified screeners are scarce.

AI detection →

Full Checkpoints

Multi-lane screening with tables, queue design and signage, engineered around your footprint — indoors, in tents or in temporary structures.

X-ray & metal detector hire →

Just as important

What You Probably Don't Need

You don't need to buy anything. For most events, hire is simply correct: the equipment is maintained, insured, delivered and collected by us, and you pay for the days you use it. You also don't need a screener for every lane — AI-assisted lanes change that arithmetic, which matters more every season as trained screeners get harder to find. And you don't need airport-style item-level screening at a festival gate; it will not find more weapons than a well-run archway and search, and it will cost you the queue.

In practice

How It Runs Day To Day

We arrive and build

Delivered, positioned, powered and tested by our own install team — the people who know these systems better than anyone.

We stay

Technical cover for the duration, 24/7 on covered events. Where a fault can't be fixed in place, a replacement comes from a fleet of 300+.

We clear the site

Collected, checked back into the workshop and prepared for the next event. You keep nothing but the invoice.

One-day private functions through to season-long contracts. Tell us the dates and we'll confirm availability.

Proof

A Season With Zero Installation Issues

More UK music events come to RedteQ each summer, on the back of a hire fleet kept in genuinely good condition and an install team that has built these checkpoints hundreds of times. Across this year's music events, every installation ran without a single issue.

Read the case study 70+ systems at the Irish Open

Multi-lane hired screening checkpoint built inside an event marquee

Event Screening Questions

Can you hire screening equipment for a single festival weekend?

Yes. We hire from a fleet of over 300 owned systems, for anything from a one-day private function to a season-long contract. Hire includes delivery, positioning, commissioning and technical support for the duration — 24/7 cover on covered events — and collection afterwards.

What screening is best at a festival gate?

For UK events the dominant weapon threat is bladed, so a properly calibrated walk-through metal detector with zone indication, backed by trained bag search, covers the realistic risk while keeping the gate flowing. X-ray and AI-assisted lanes are added where the risk assessment or the venue requires deeper bag screening.

Does screening an event satisfy Martyn's Law?

No — not on its own. Martyn's Law places duties on the responsible person for qualifying premises and qualifying events, and it mandates no specific equipment. A qualifying event (800 or more people, with controlled entry) sits in the enhanced tier, which means public protection procedures plus appropriate measures to reduce vulnerability, documented and provided to the Security Industry Authority.

Entry screening is one of the clearest measures available to an event, and for many gates it is the right one. But it is the assessment, the procedures and the documentation that satisfy the duty — the equipment delivers part of the answer, it isn't the answer. Our FAQs set out both tiers, and the Martyn's Law guide covers the practical version.

Screening For Your Event

Dates, expected footfall, gates and whether you have power. That is enough for us to come back with a plan.

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