The Security Industry Authority is coming up to – depending on where you count from – its 20th birthday. It’s a good time to take stock of it. Mark Rowe begins by asking a short, but anything but simple, question: what’s the value of the SIA?
First, to recall the ACS Pacesetters awards lunch, at Windsor in May (to explain briefly, Pacesetters is a group of the top 15 per cent by ACS score of SIA-approved contractors; it isn’t connected with the SIA). The invited speaker was the SIA’s Steve McCormick who took as his theme the value of the SIA. I did speak to him briefly afterwards to in jest complain that I had begun work on an article on that very subject, so it looked as if I was copying him. On reflection ‘great minds think alike’. And it is a natural question for the SIA to set itself and for the individuals and companies that pay fees to the SIA to ask.
Very roughly, the SIA costs about £30m a year to run. In round figures, that makes £600m over 20 years; money that could have gone on officer wages, or gone on the upkeep of guarding company directors’ villas in Spain. At least some of that money would have been spent, even if the SIA had never happened. Westminster and other councils in the 1990s had begun to badge door staff; the NSI was already accrediting guard firms, to bronze (acknowledging that a company existed and was starting out), silver and gold. The SIA has created some economic utility, such as the trainers of courses required before you can apply for an SIA licence.
Barrier to entry
That’s raised the barrier to entry into the industry, making it like a taxi or lorry driver. You cannot walk in off the street to work as a guard, or just set yourself up as a guarding provider. To some, that’s a bad thing. It’s easily forgotten how much resistance the industry put up to the SIA. Partly that was on principle. No matter what the SIA regime, self-made men who owned free-market guarding companies resented a Labour government telling them how to run their business. Partly the resistance was financial. The SIA would cost; and you could hardly expect customers to care or understand about the new regulator. So the cost would have to come off margins. The industry would want to see something in return.
A corner of London
You only have to look on any high street or business park or shopping mall; let’s take one corner of London, around Excel, the venue for IFSEC. A ribbon of hotels to the east cater for exhibitors. On patrol around some of their car parks during IFSEC week was a man in black, and one or two others wearing Wilson James high-vis coats; one with black gloves in the pockets, because even in mid-May, it can feel cold in the middle of the night. Before IFSEC in May, I took a walk along the dock (pictured, view to London City Airport), to a new campus of the University of East London (UEL). I was photographing the shiny new buildings, the airliners take off from London City Airport, and the Zen-like calm of the water. It made me stick out from the joggers and commuting cyclists. At a UEL shelter, a security officer in a hi-vis jacket was taking a smoking break. As I passed he said to me, ‘morning, brother,’ and I said good morning back.
The man was being more than good-mannered; he had noticed I was not a normal passer-by, and by his greeting let me know he had noticed me. Along the dockside railings are Project Servator, and no-drone signs, as the airport as critical national infrastructure is a target, whether for hostile reconnaissance or well-meaning hobby drone pilots. Other IFSEC exhibitors stay at the hotels at Silvertown beside the airport. That whole stretch of the Thames is seeing re-development, such as the Royal Wharf, of three to eight-storey apartments. A private estate, it has a concierge and post room, and plentiful on-street cameras. Inside the Sainsbury’s mini-store was a Mitie security officer wearing his SIA badge on his left sleeve, as so many do. It’s an affluent area (if you want a place to live that estate agents call ‘spacious’, it’ll cost you £1m or more) and the guard was not standing at the door, but beside the tills, facing the aisles, while able to chat with staff. In sum, then, SIA-badged officers are far more common sights than police. But presumably they would be employed, even if the SIA never existed. What’s the value-add of the badge?!
Under cover
Some, perhaps much, of it, is taken for granted; such as the check that keeps those with a criminal record check out. In the mid-2000s when first door staff then contract guards and CCTV operators got badged, those already in the sector with a criminal record got refused. The numbers of those denied the licence to work naturally fell to a trickle because once the criteria for refusal became known, why would you bother applying, only to be refused? The SIA regime, then, prevents a negative; but does it add positives? The badge requires you to be qualified; but that’s not necessarily the same as being competent. A detail from the 2013 Channel 4 documentary Undercover Boss, which starred the then UK head of the contractor Securitas, Geoff Zeidler. He was ‘under cover’ as a security officer at a shopping centre, being tried out as a newcomer. On the mall, a man came up to him being rowdy. Zeidler visibly had difficulty in dealing with the trouble-maker; the superviser had to intervene. In any case it wasn’t a real trouble-maker but someone playing the part. It did show that Zeidler wasn’t very good at being a front-line officer. Why should he have been? Securitas hired him as an experienced executive. Indeed he went on to serve a term on the SIA board; and attended IFSEC 2022. None of this is to criticise Zeidler; indeed, the first time I saw him after he appeared on Channel 4 I complimented him on taking part. In an interview with the Financial Times he acknowledged that the very nature of the documentary was to seek drama – a boss discomfited by finding out unwelcome things on the ground (and several duly cropped up in the hour broadcast). But the point here: Zeidler, the same as I, could pass the SIA course and pay for a licence. But that would not mean we are competent security officers or doormen.
Standard of officer
Has the standard of officer risen? That’s possibly not the question to ask, if – because of the terror threat ever since 7-7, and the austerity hit to the police – ever more is asked of private security. Bear in mind that while the Manchester Arena Inquiry in its first report last summer found fault with the SIA regime besides the stewarding and site security at the Arena, if anything the SIA is likely to be given more to do as a result, such as the compulsory licensing of businesses. That implies there’s value in what the SIA does. It brings us to the other half of the SIA’s regime (and its income), the voluntary approved contractor scheme, mainly for guarding companies. Value in the ACS has been even harder to measure or articulate, to the industry or buyers or anyone.
For part two, on the approved contractor scheme – visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/news/case-studies/sia-at-20-part-two-acs/.
