While the Manchester Arena Inquiry, that began in September 2020, has yet to finish and public a final report, in the summer its wide-ranging first report covered security at the Arena on and before the night of May 22, 2017. The report took in the Arena itself, its crowd management and stewarding contractor Showsec, and police (British Transport and Greater Manchester forces), and the regulator the Security Industry Authority.
The SIA has published an interim update on its work on the points raised by that first report. Consec, the annual conference of the Association of Security Consultants (coincidentally hosted by a retired SIA chief, Bill Butler), is due to devote its afternoon to the Inquiry, and the Protect duty that is likely to become law after the Inquiry ends, as the Home Office’s response. Consec on Thursday will hear from Paul Greaney QC, counsel to the Inquiry.
As for the SIA’s update; after the Inquiry heard criticism of delivery of some training towards the SIA licence, the SIA reports that it looked into two (unnamed) training companies: one ‘training centre has had their accreditation withdrawn by the relevant awarding organisation after a loss of confidence in the centre’s management and administration. The training centre has since closed.’
The SIA adds that last year, it ’employed consultants to spot checked approximately 15 to 20 per cent of training centres. These efforts have uncovered some areas for improvement, but no serious malpractice of the type described in the evidence given at the Inquiry’.
The Inquiry in June queried whether SIA badging for public space CCTV monitoring should only be for contract operatives. The updates says: “The SIA has reviewed this and agrees in principle that the requirement that only those monitoring CCTV under a contract for services need to hold an SIA licence should be changed to include directly employed CCTV operatives.” As the SIA adds, it would be for the UK Government (covering England and Wales), and the governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland, to decide politically whether to pass laws to make such a change to bring in-house CCTV monitoring under the SIA badging regime.
Also raised by the Inquiry was whether security businesses should be licensed by the SIA; or in particular to ensure that only those ‘fit and proper companies’ are carrying out counter-terror work. As the SIA points out, this would relate to the Protect Duty, which the Home Office is ‘finalising’; and ‘it is difficult to see how mandatory business and individual licensing can be mutually exclusive’.
On training for stewards and security officers, which has also cropped up in the Inquiry and its first report, the SIA says that it expects that employers and business train their staff for specific deployments (besides, that is, the now five day basic training before applying for an SIA badge). The regulator points out that as from October 1, it’s requiring that all door supervision and security guarding licence holders take extra licence linked training (a new departure for the 15-year-old Authority; previously, once you got your badge, you only had to pay to renew it every three years). This top-up training includes first aid and counter-terrorism.
For the SIA’s document in full visit the SIA website, or the Inquiry website.
Picture by Mark Rowe; stairs from Manchester Victoria station to the Arena.
