Evidence is conflicting whether the private security industry has ‘made it’, and has taken its place among longer-established trades and professions such as the police, writes Mark Rowe.
Recently in a dinner at the Mansion House in the City of London, the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals (WCoSP) marked its 25th anniversary – alongside another Worshipful Company, for management consultants, marking 20 years; and the Security Institute marked its founding year, 1999. WCoSP is a sign of two things – first, that private security is a thing of substance; and that it has an equal footing with other occupations. While nowhere does ceremony quite like the City – flowers for the ladies, fine wine, wedding-cake-like architecture – and its relation to the actual world is questionable (though there may lie some of the appeal), it’s not the only sign of private security’s good health. More recently the Institute at its AGM announced three new directors, who are all Chartered Security Professionals (CSyPs): Chris Stevens, Paul Wood and Mike OโNeill.
The backgrounds of the three show the sheer variety of private security (and a place for people of the most various experiences, qualifications and ages). Less remarked on is that the Institute had to hold an election, because other candidates came forward. In an age, pre- and post-covid where industry and voluntary bodies are struggling to get anyone to volunteer, the Institute is fortunate to have men and women of goodwill, who want to give something back.
All is not well. Partly, because of the very issues of crime and disorder that have prompted the rise of private security over our lifetimes. To take only one example, at the recent exhibition at the NEC, pictured, two women from a clinical and not a security background – Megan Williams, of Royal Derby Healthcare Trust, who leads on violence reduction for the trust; and Laura Smith, a team leader at Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust – made a call to action, asking that clinical staff have a say in the security measures whether training of staff, use of body-worn cameras, โclear and conciseโ policies, or environmental design of clinical areas (in the heat of a moment, someone angry could pick up a chair, a television set, anything that they might throw?).
For a report of what they said, see the July print edition of Professional Security Magazine. Suffice to say here, that nurses and clinicians, in hospitals or visiting patients in their own homes, are assaulted, verbally and physically. Towards the end of their talk I raised the abolition of the central function for security management inside the National Health Service, NHS Protect. Didn’t what the women raise – not only the sheer number of incidents of violence and aggression, but the fact that no-one was counting them, or offering (to take only one example) standard training for use of body-worn cameras, suggest a need for an NHS Protect? Indeed, as featured in the December 2023 edition of Professional Security, as aired at the National Association for Healthcare Security (NAHS) annual conference in Birmingham, NHS England is at work on re-inventing such a body, expected to take a couple of years. Which may be in time for it to enable the NHS to comply with a Martyn’s Law, more formally known (ironically, although the Home Office does not do irony any better than it does its actual functions) as the Protect Duty.
At the time of NHS Protect’s abolition in 2017, some complained such as the trade union Unison. We can see that – take away the froth of this announcement of a launch or grants to spend, or that political promise, a few decisions turn out to be of lingering importance. Such as, the abolition of NHS Protect – it became the Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA), reverting to its original fraud-only tasking – and under the Coalition Government, the public policy of drastically closing courts, lessening resilience of the court system, and inviting more or less inevitably a backlog of cases, meaning strains up and down the pipeline of criminal justice. And for the witness and accused alike, meaning longer journeys to court, adding to the sum of unhappiness (worrying about childcare, seeing the magistrates’ court in your town – empty and unsold years later – overgrown with ivy).
Without blaming anyone – because those in authority do tend to take no notice – where was the security industry when either of those decisions got taken? What is its influence, on government, police (numerous forces continue to hold up national deployment of the ECHO scheme of automated alarm calls, because their IT departments prioritise other, no doubt also pressing, things)? The security industry can get its act together, as it did when the Coalition in 2010 suggested that the Security Industry Authority (SIA) be abolished as a quango. Had that happened, like the end of NHS Protect, private security would have spent weary years trying to get back some regulation.
For private security to have influence requires persons of influence, which may imply a single body headed by some figure, the equivalent of the British Medical Association for doctors and Police Federation for coppers. Some in private security have aired that. Featured in the April edition of Professional Security, Neill Catton, a past chair of the City Security Council, mentioned it in passing in a talk at the UK OSPAs thought leadership conference in February. Frank Cannon, now a consultant, last year an interim chief of the Institute, has written similarly. That they have put in time for the greater good gives weight to what they say.
It may stay in the ‘too difficult’ folder. Even if the industry were to put its hand in its pocket metaphorically and appoint someone, not only would that bring the risk of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’, there’s no guarantee the hired individual would have the skill of spotting those momentous decisions, like the closure of NHS Protect and courts. The right time to influence is pressing because a clapped-out Conservative Government may well make way for a Labour Government in a general election in later 2024. That will be a fairly rare chance – the last ones were in 2010 and 1997 – to bang the drum, publicly and in the right ears privately – to take public policy in new directions, talking to fresh ministers.
