The SIA’s latest monthly, November 2025 statistics about licence holders show a record, 458,705 total of those holding a Security Industry Authority licence; a rise of 138 compared with the month before. That 458,705 is a rise of about 17,000 in the previous 12 months. While the number of badged women has stayed above 50,000, having topped that landmark the month before, women are 10.9 per cent of the whole.
Nationality
In terms of nationality, those badged who are ‘British’ have gone up by 1550 in 12 months, to more than 242,000; while those from Pakistan, the second most numerous group by country, have gone up by more than 12,000, to 72,000. The next most common, from Nigeria, rose by 4000.
Age
The mode (most occurring) age of the SIA-badged is 26; a year ago it was 27. Ten of the SIA-badged are aged 90 or more; one is 100. Some 185 are aged 80 or more; the equivalent of about four in 10,000. Each year from 21 to 40 inclusive has more than 10,000 badged people, and from then each year’s total tapers off gradually. Each year has more than 1000 badged until 70 inclusive.
Over 70s
The absolute number and relative percentage of post-retirement age people with SIA badges is rising. As of November 2024, some 3419 people of the 440,816 SIA-badged were 70 or older, 0.78 per cent of the whole. As of November 2025, the total of 70-plus SIA-badged has risen to 3847, or 0.84 pre cent of the 458,705 total. In a year the total of over-70s SIA-badged has risen by 12.5 per cent, while the total of over-80s, albeit only from 235 to 257, is a rise of 9.4 per cent.
Area
By area, London remains by far the place where most licence holders are, with more than 128,000; to that you might add ‘Slough and Heathrow’, which comes in fourth. In between are Manchester and Birmingham (pictured: Bullring shopping centre). The towns and cities are ranked the same in terms of numbers of SIA-badged compared with 12 months ago – Luton is in fifth, then Glasgow, Bradford, Liverpool, Leicester, Leeds, Sheffield and Cardiff. ‘Wolverhampton and Walsall’ has leap-frogged into 13th over Newcastle and Bristol; and Bristol has gone above Newcastle, which has fallen from 13th to 16th. Another riser is Nottingham, from 17th to 14th. Despite that rise in the badged total, the number of SIA-badged in a few seemingly unconnected towns has fallen slightly: in Dundee, from 999 in November 2024 to 978 in November 2025; in Bridgend in south Wales, from 606 to 566; and in Darlington, from 468 a year before to 442.
Some 517,000 licences are ‘active’; that number is larger than the 458,705 because some people will hold more than one, typically a door supervision licence to carry out guarding, and a public space CCTV surveillance licence for work in a control room.
For the monthly stats going back to December 2020, visit the SIA website: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/sia-licence-holders.
A separate dataset from the SIA covers licence applications (and qualifications, as required for someone to apply for a badge). The number of ‘awarded qualifications’ going back to 2019 show that pre-covid normally about 7000 a month were awarded; that fell to a trickle during the first covid pandemic lockdown of spring 2020. Since January 2022 the total has been above 10,000 a month, apart from December 2024; for January to October 2025, each month has been above 12,000. For the first ten months of 2024, the total of awarded qualifications were 165,328; by comparison the first ten months’ of 2025 total was 131,381.
