A Guide To Combating Harassment

A Guide To Combating Harassment

In light of a recent news story in which Office for National Statistics data shows that in Sunderland alone, 3,203 cases of stalking, harassment or malicious communications were reported between October 2017 and September 2018, we have decided to re-up one of our most acclaimed guidance posts from the last eighteen months.

After all, it remains the case that more and more individuals around Tyne and Wear are coming to professional private investigation companies such as ours to help them try to evidence and deal with harassment as a civil matter in order to bring about an end to the distress it is causing in their lives.

Incidents of harassment, more so in the age of growing social media platforms, are increasing and police services are now de-prioritising dealing with it due to an ongoing staffing and funding crisis. Read more about A Guide To Combating Harassment

Surviving Harassment – A Guest Blog

Surviving Harassment – A Guest Blog

We continue to welcome guest submissions for our blog from solicitors, clients, HR specialists, professionals within the insurance industry and the like. If you or someone you know would like to submit an entry – or if you have an idea for a guest blog subject that is amenable to the type of work we do at Surmount – please drop us a line at enquiries@surmount-investigations.co.uk

With the permission of our ex-client / the original author who we helped on a difficult Harassment case in Newcastle Upon Tyne, we’re reposting her blog which received a large amount of attention when first published and which she uses as a platform to a) talk through her experience of working with us to bring her distress to an end and b) hopefully help other people out there who might be in a similar position.

[To protect her identity, and at her own request, all names have been changed]. Read more about Surviving Harassment – A Guest Blog

Bail Affirmations – A Case Study

Bail Affirmations – A Case Study

‘Bail Affirmations’ are a service we provide to solicitors and law firms frequently. We have assisted the CPS, the police and private clients with gathering evidence to confirm whether those awaiting trial pertaining to criminal matters are breaching the bail restrictions conditional to their release.

A solicitor client of ours who uses us regularly for process serving got in touch and explained that she was representing a father, ‘Darren’, in a rather acrimonious custody dispute matter. She said that the father’s ex-wife, ‘Leanne’, had been in a relationship with a violent drug user, ‘Brian’, who was recently released from police custody for an arrest involving taking/supplying drugs in front of the children of ‘Darren’ and ‘Leanne’ and beating them on two separate occasions. Read more about Bail Affirmations – A Case Study

The Importance of Lawful Conduct In Private Investigation

The Importance of Lawful Conduct In Private Investigation

We continually promote ourselves to law firms, insurers, businesses and private clients around Newcastle and North East as being an investigation and security consultancy service driven with the desire to help people whilst maintaining ethics and integrity in how we conduct our services that, rather sadly, many assume our industry doesn’t possess.

The media and pop culture in general play up the archetype of our profession as being the type that skulks in the shadows, doing all sorts of illegalities in order to acquire evidence against someone or some company.

It really isn’t like that at all. Read more about The Importance of Lawful Conduct In Private Investigation

Make Sure Your Required Local Investigator IS Local.

Make Sure Your Required Local Investigator IS Local.

More and more of late the field of professional investigation is being plagued by ‘national’ agencies who disingenuously pretend they have “regional reach” into – in our case – places like Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, Northumberland and the rest of the North East.

Routinely they are London based or thereabouts. There is no one main investigative head office or HQ and no hierarchy of investigators. It is simply a website that splinters off to suggest it is local to you dependent on where you’re searching for. The people behind this ‘agency’ might be based in Essex or wherever, but it’s imperative to them that you believe they are based in your city where ever you are. Read more about Make Sure Your Required Local Investigator IS Local.

NEW AVENUES FOR SUPPORT AGAINST HARASSMENT

NEW AVENUES FOR SUPPORT AGAINST HARASSMENT

At Surmount Investigations we provide a comprehensive and bespoke support package to those who are suffering harassment in a multitude of different forms, which you can read more about here.

The most common type of support we offer to clients for this service relates to people who have exited a relationship and the ex-partner is causing them distress or in other respects a person has rejected someone’s affections and this person has turned nasty towards them as a result.

However, new changes in the law now reflect an acknowledgement that harassment, alarm and distress can occur to an individual within a relationship and legislation has now been expanded to define a whole raft of behaviours by your spouse or partner as a criminal act. Read more about NEW AVENUES FOR SUPPORT AGAINST HARASSMENT

CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

At Surmount Investigations we offer one of the most comprehensive defence investigation services in the region.

We work with individuals who have been accused of a criminal offence but who maintain their innocence and feel that they have been let down ahead of their impending court date by an insufficient consolidation and presentation of the facts. We do this work either through instruction from the individual’s legal representative or in partnership with said representative.

Our work has ranged from supporting someone accused of a driving offence which they wished to contest through to helping someone who had been accused of a serious assault occasioning grievous bodily harm they denied ever committing, with quite a few variants in cases in between.

With this week’s blog we are going to take a closer and more detailed look at the benefits of employing a defence investigator to your case – with great haste! Read more about CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

OLD GOALS SMASHED! … NEW GOALS FORMED!

OLD GOALS SMASHED! … NEW GOALS FORMED!

With our second operational year now behind us, we wanted to do as we did in the first year and take a quick look back on what we’ve achieved as private investigators in Newcastle and throughout the whole of the North East.

Whilst working with the specific mandate of changing people’s perceptions of what a private investigator does and only taking on cases that meet our very high ethical standards, we set out the goals in our first year of 1) getting accepted as full/substantive members into a professional regulatory body within our field, 2) getting onto Page 1 of Google without any ‘tricks’ or ‘cheats’, 3) breaking further into the field of insurance fraud work and litigation support and 4) we wanted to survive the year. Read more about OLD GOALS SMASHED! … NEW GOALS FORMED!

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

Our client in Gateshead came to us at their wits end because of new neighbours next door that were of the “nightmare” variety instantly upon moving in – and only getting worse with each day.

It started with the neighbours allowing their four dogs out each day to urinate and defecate on our client’s property. When they were challenged about it and asked to stop it, the harassment started immediately: Loud music being put on blast when they went out so that our client had to suffer it, rubbish being purposefully thrown over the fence line in the back garden and property damage occurring during the night. Read more about HOW TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL