Behind the scenes at Policelot: The Wakefield company supplying shows including The Responder, Happy Valley, and Emmerdale

Wakefield’s Policelot is a specialist company providing film and TV productions with police-related props, costumes, and even supporting artists (SAs) who are specially trained in police-related background acting.

They have brought to life high profile productions including Happy Valley, The Responder and Emmerdale, supplying everything from police uniforms and body-worn cameras to breathalysers and truncheons.

David Clayton, director of Policelot, started his business in Wakefield decades ago.

He said: “This all came up about being in the right place at the right time.”

David stepped in as an advisor on the Emmerdale film set one day when it was filming in Wakefield, and found that people began looking to him for props and costumes.

“I just thought: there’s an idea for a business here, and it grew and grew from that,” he said.

Keen on encouraging sustainability, David said items from film sets are often sent to landfill once filming has concluded, and Policelot has made an effort to reuse items for its own premises.

In fact, much of the custody suite which occupies Policelot’s main entrance is made of reused items from the Sky production’s Brassic set – including the building’s front doors.

One strand to the business – one which the company is looking to expand – is supplying film sets with SAs who are accustomed to police-related roles. SAs at Policelot undergo accredited training to learn specific skills required to create a believable performance on-screen.

Speaking about the agency, David said: “We see it more like a little family business, I know every single person that’s in our agency. They’re not just a number.”

Explaining the sorts of skills the SAs learn, David said: “You can put a police costume on somebody but they don’t look like a police officer.

"A lot of it’s about stance, how you hold yourself; we do more technical things about how you work with actors working closely. If you’re working with a principal there are certain rules and regulations that you need to understand before working with somebody.

“We talk about how to use all the equipment, how to use radios and body-worn cameras and things like that.

"Everybody pretty much thinks they know how to use a radio if you’ve had walkie-talkies as a kid or you might have seen things on TV, but we need to teach them specific ways that works with a camera crew who are around you.

"We teach a very specific hand-cuffing system which is just made for film and TV, we have to think about camera angles and sound.”

Part of Policelot’s success, David said, in attracting production companies to Wakefield, is the scope of the company. Not only can a production source high-quality props and costumes from Policelot, but also specially trained SAs and filming space on-site if required.

“It’s all done in one area, it just makes life for production so much easier.”

Policelot can also advise productions who are filming police-related productions set in a specific time period using their vast database of police history.

David said: “Knowing exactly when a radio, a particular model, came out, when truncheons changed...that’s the worst thing when you’re watching and maybe the cars are the wrong era or they forgot to change the number plates.

"We don’t want things like to happen so we always make sure that we’ve researched stuff like that beforehand. I think research is one of the biggest things to make sure that what we’re supplying a production is correct.”

David has also noted some changes in the industry during his time running Policelot. Cameras have much improved over the years, and with higher definition on audience’s screens comes a need for more believable, higher quality props which are convincing for viewers.

“We want it to be authentic,” he said.

"Things like body worn cameras are practical, because that’s what productions want it to be, they want it to be as real as possible.

"Years ago you might have made fake props and things like that [but] with digital TV nowadays, things are in 4K, and even some things are shot in 8K as well, so it means everything is very noticeable, every single wrinkle is noticeable on the faces, but it’s also really noticeable that an item, prop or clothing is not authentic, so we’re 100 per cent genuine in everything that we supply.”

The advent of social media also brought a more intense level of audience scrutiny – gone are the days when colleagues would share their opinions about the latest TV show over what David called a “water-cooler moment” back at work on a Monday, but now rather are more likely to be exchanging views over X (Twitter) during the ad breaks of the show itself.

David said this, coupled with an increased exposure more generally of the workings of the police, have raised the standard for the film and TV industry to produce higher quality, more realistic productions:

“I think people nowadays, because we’re exposed more to what happens within the police. They’re a bit more understanding of exactly what happens, so we have to portray much more accurately within film and TV the correct way of doing police procedures.”

You can find more information about the company on the Policelot website.