After the SIA chair Elizabeth France, spoke at the Security TWENTY event at Heathrow in November, I asked about the senior man from Securitas due to speak at the SIA’s own conference the week after. Was it a coincidence? as in 2003 at the Authority’s launch conference, another Securitas exec had spoken, looking ahead to the gains from badging – better retention of better trained staff, better pay rates – over ten to 15 years (in other words, by now). It was a coincidence. Liz France was kind enough to mention that at the very start of the SIA’s conference, and that I was there in 2003. At least one other was, Stuart Lowden. Craig Robb’s talk was dazzling (page 56) but in a sense terrifying. Thomas Berglund in 2003 had spoken of what officers could look forward to; in the world Robb forecast, of ever more tech, what is there for workers? ‘Zero hours’ gigs? Where are the rights, the dignity?
As some at the 2019 conference remarked to me, there was a ‘good vibe’ (a phrase behind the times in 2003, never mind 2019, surely). Indeed there was; gone are the grumbles about delays in granting or renewing badges. Is the SIA glass half full, or half empty? I did raise a question about community safety accredited (CSAS) officers, SIA-badged, patrolling high streets (page 54). The SIA is setting up a ‘skills board’ which might draw up, and bang the drum for, extra training specific to such demanding front-line roles, also in hospitals and on campuses. Or it might not.
One theme of the SIA conference was what the industry ought to do, and what the Authority can do. For healthcare security, and for universities and for community safety, qualifications have been around, for years, even. If not taken up much, that’s the fault of the market, though I believe the time has come for mandated some extra sector-specific courses beyond the basic four-day learning for the SIA security officer or doorman badge; because the industry can’t or won’t better itself (page 52).
Those CSAS officers and guards in A&E are doing police-like work, without the back-up, long training and probation, let alone pay, of police. Some work behind the sector-specific courses is done by volunteers, besides their day jobs. I can accept that the SIA does not want to enter commerce. But it’s for the SIA, a £30m a year body, to take the lead, to find the spare bodies, to bring these things on. The SIA has brought on good training, in safeguarding the vulnerable, and counter-terrorism. The conference heard of progress with the police (page 16). And there was one other connection between the 2003 and 2019 events, I only found out later; I will have to tell you next time.
The SIA could not talk politics because of the civil service ‘purdah’ (a word that I have just had to look up). The room seemed quite glad. I did wonder if the caterers, at The Oval cricket ground, were making a political point when they served as dessert at lunch a pudding called Eton Mess.
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