S12 is short for various sections of various Acts of Parliament, and the postcode of the south eastern suburbs of Sheffield. As announced by Home Office security minister Dan Jarvis at the International Security Expo at London Olympia, pictured, on October 1, it also stands for a group of guarding sector people who have the minister’s ear. Mark Rowe reports.
As Dan Jarvis put it to an unusually large audience at the show, S12 is ‘a new industry led initiative to bring together various parts of the private security industry to be able to speak to government with one voice’. As for the first half of that statement, it’s hardly so; S12 is heavy with guarding contractors (although the likes of Mitie and G4S would argue that they offer a wide service, from forecasting and analysis, as indeed showcased at the Expo, to CCTV surveillance and monitoring). But you don’t rise in politics as Dan Jarvis has without being extremely careful with words. We should note therefore that while he politely spoke of the first, ‘constructive’ meeting with the group upstairs at Olympia before his 11am speech, he went on that he ‘was able to listen to what they had to say about how we can organise to improve standards in the security industry; I am keen for the Government and the SIA to work closely with them’. In other words, it’s for guarding to come up with ideas – as set out by S12 organiser Paul Evans, chief of Carlisle Support Services, in an interview in the October edition of Professional Security Magazine, more, and deeper, ‘integrated’ private security with the police – and Jarvis as minister will listen.
Securing UK
S12 has caused an online stir and for good reason. It’s the most consequential addition to industry bodies since the (pre-covid) City Security Council of mainly London-based guarding firms that while branching out to Manchester and Liverpool, is mainly still doing things in the City of London. As in any endeavour, some will always grumble, whether about principle or more pettily about whether this person or that should or shouldn’t be in the group. The fact is that 20 years into the SIA licensing regime, and after the breakthrough in the 2010s of private security taking on visible responsibility for the protection of outright public space, beyond the semi-public space of shopping centres and the like, it’s become high time for frameworks to reflect that advance. Either police can trust private security contractors or they can’t, with details about who’s patrolling where and when. For private security without scandals quietly goes about securing UK life. To consider only the three guard firms named so far, Carlisle, Mitie and G4S, they are in effect the first responders and uniformed presence at Labour Party conferences at Liverpool; at the construction site around the Olympia venue; they give personal protection to members of Parliament; they guard and monitor the perimeter CCTV at nuclear power stations.
One voice
For the private security industry ‘to speak …. with one voice’ has been a refrain for decades. Occasionally, around the millennium (JSIC) and currently (the Security Commonwealth) an umbrella body has been in place to, in theory, be that representative. Yet surely what matters are the practicalities – being not a talking shop, a repository of seat-filling bores, time-wasters and CV polishers who don’t actually do a thing and stifle anyone who wants to get things done; but coming up with ideas and making them happen. Paul Evans evidently felt that the plethora of industry bodies in existence did not provide the all-important access to a minister’s ear, and so went about creating a forum. It will never please everyone.
Next stop permanence
As campaigners for Martyn’s Law well know, it’s one thing to set something up – in their case the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act that became law in April 2025 and may come into force in later 2027 (the authorities characteristically refuse to set a timetable) – and another thing to make it effective. S12 has at least two tasks – three, if we add a dozen or so workstreams – more or less each member will take one, presumably matching their interests, after the October 1 first getting-to-know-you gathering. I understand the aim will be for S12 to meet in-person rather than online. Note what a demand on time this is, on guarding MDs and chiefs already busy (and with businesses to keep profitable). They do it, in the words of one member, for the ‘greater good’, corny though that sounds. Significantly, S12 members are committed members of private security while politicians, SIA and Home Office civil servants, and senior police, come and go and rotate in posts. Task one, therefore, is for S12 to achieve permanence – one S12 member wondered to me if Labour will still be in office in another two years. I believe it will, the same as the Coalition of 2010 lasted until 2015 (for who with power ever wants to give it up?) but the fact is by 2029 Reform UK may well take power (as considered in the October edition of Professional Security Magazine), and Home Office ministers come and go (Sir Keir Starmer in his August re-shuffle had one good clear-out already, one year in).
New blood versus memory
Task two is for S12 to balance the need, like any business or body of people, between a steady flow of new blood and retaining organisational memory. Governance is boring, yet where would we be without clubs, charities and limited companies? The S12, if it stands the test of time, has to work out whether or after how many years to demand rotation of (volunteer) board members, as the security management association ASIS has done. The prize, then, is not only in practical things – a common uniform of security patrollers on the high street (in what colour, blue, yellow, red?), plugged into police comms. More intangibly, whether the S12 prospers will show how much goodwill is in the guarding sector – for all the competition for contracts and margin, and for all its faults, its chronic shortcomings in terms of standards, 20 years into the SIA regime, let alone (as Martyn’s Law campaigner Figen Murray pointed to in her welcoming of the S12) on working conditions, pay and diversity.
