Whether the Security Industry Authority’s proposals for the regulator’s approved contractor scheme (ACS) – considerable, and including a new name, making it a business approval scheme – are good or bad is not so much the question, writes Mark Rowe. Any answer depends on what you believe the SIA’s purpose should be, and who it should ultimately be there for.
The SIA has lost no time in proceeding towards its refresh of the ACS. While you or I might have things in our wardrobe or sock draw that are near 20 years old and are still fit for wear, the UK as protected by SIA-badged officers has changed greatly since the SIA licensing regime and voluntary approvals scheme began, over the mid-2000s. The SIA had done the groundwork by setting out what it had in mind last year, at its annual conference in London in September (featured in the November edition of Professional Security Magazine) and then gatherings around the UK. A consultation ran from February to April and one week after the general election, it has published the consultation results.
While the first Labour government in 14 years has yet to reveal its nature, let alone its priorities and what if anything it has in mind for the private security sector, the SIA will be hopeful that Labour is intellectually and physically less wearied than the Conservative government was by its end.
The SIA’s first question in its consultation set the tone; did you agree with a ‘focus on public protection outcomes’ in the proposed approval scheme? That was the private security equivalent of asking if you approve of kindness towards cats and children; who isn’t in favour of ‘public protection’? Except that if you are a corporate, retail or many other buyers of guarding, you want your premises and staff looked after; your narrow interest may not coincide with the greater good; we pay taxes for public protection, by the police.
Here lies the tension identified years ago by the criminologist Prof Mark Button at Portsmouth University; is the SIA there to be a cheer-leader for the security industry, doing its bidding; or does the SIA ultimately see itself as serving the Home Office, or the public (far from the same thing, in practice), and the security industry is having regulation done to it? All three; regulated sector, public and the government have valid interests; to return to the approvals scheme. Does it exist mainly as a badge – voluntarily held – for mainly guarding contractors, that they see enough commercial value in, to afford the assessing and annual re-assessment? Even leaving aside the other interest groups, guard firms cannot agree what the approval scheme should create. I’ve heard one guarding chief suggest a change to only 100 approved firms – that is, drastically fewer than the present 750 or so, presumably because the standards are that much harder to meet.
When we ask what sort of approvals scheme we prefer we are really asking what sort of guarding sector we want – one open to small firms, new starters, entrepreneurs? When the SIA regime came in, the operator working cash in hand, off a kitchen table, was the bad guy (usually a guy, seldom a gal). Yet thanks to changes in tech, remote working is acceptable, even normal.
Part two of two: sub-contracting.
Photo by Mark Rowe: security officers, Manchester tram.
