Editor Mark Rowe’s page 7 editorial from the Professional Security magazine December 2014 issue.
You may have noticed over the years that Professional Security has never used its last issue of the year to do a review. Partly because I reckon it’s a lazy way of finishing the year, and partly because this time of year is quite busy enough with news, better news to tell you than to regurgitate what you read months ago. Project Servator, that has much to interest security people, is carrying on in the City of London (page 22). Security guard forces in hospitals for instance may – gladly?! – be drawn into the Government’s replacements for ASBOs. After years of being assured by vendors that biometric products are going to be cheap and reliable enough for mass market use, and that people will be happy to use them, it looks as if it might be coming true (page 30). Although other governments such as New Zealand seem ahead of ours in biometric identities for quicker access to public services (page 32).
What can we say about our Coalition Government?! It looks as if it’ll preside over five years of the Security Industry Authority in limbo. From what Elizabeth France the chair of the SIA says – in effect telling the industry it’s not the regulator’s fault it’s not brought in business licensing – you can almost feel sorry for the SIA (page 14). Except that the ones to really feel sorry for are the businesses left in the dark about whether or when they have to put in the work on business licensing (and pay for it). The block appears to come from the Department for Business, whose minister is the Liberal Democrat, Vince Cable. Returning to the Home Office last month as crime prevention minister after Norman Baker resigned was another Lib Dem, Lynne Featherstone, pictured, who as a Home Office minister responsible for the SIA for two years showed scant interest in the sector. Or, as the main party in the Coalition, are the Tories at fault, for not driving through the reform of the quango SIA, that in 2010 they were so keen to do? As we near the general election in May I shall try to let you know what the main three political parties have to say for themselves.
As ever, security management work has to carry on regardless. If you work on the railways, or your paths cross with the railways – such as the stewarding of football away fans who may travel by train – take a look at page 48 for the latest thinking on railway policing. As the train operators pay for it, they want value for money. If – as the Home Office insists – crime is falling (though in truth reported crime is falling, which is far from the same thing) while police budgets have been cut, did we need all the police of the 2000s?! Crime prevention and security, let alone counter-terrorism, remain highly political, whether you like it or not.
