The Home Office has gone out to consultation about whether security businesses – besides individuals – ought to come under SIA (Security Industry Authority) licensing; and whether in-house security staff should have to be badged, like contract staff.
As the consultation document states, these were the Manchester Arena Inquiry monitored recommendations 7 and 8 (MR7 and MR8):
– to review whether in-house CCTV operators should be licensed (MR7); and
-to consider whether contractors who carry out security services should be licensed (MR8).
The recommendations were among those in volume one of the Inquiry’s report, published in summer 2021, about security around the Arena around the suicide bombing of May 2017. The then Conservative Government chose not to take up the recommendations; the Labour Government is reviewing. In a foreword to the consultation – which runs to March 12 – Home Office Security Minister Dan Jarvis wrote: “The safety and security of our citizens is the government’s top priority. We are committed to delivering the intended outcomes of the MAI: better uniformity of standards in the private security industry, enhanced provision of security services, and effective counter-terrorism measures. Having taken on ministerial oversight of the SIA, I am keen to ensure the SIA’s licensing regime remains effective and delivers high quality oversight of the private security industry.”
The consultation document says that ‘Extending licensing to in-house operatives would provide a base level of vetting, ensuring only ’fit and proper’ individuals who have been subject to an identity and criminal record check can be security operatives.’
The Arena Inquiry noted that two CCTV operators working at the Manchester Arena had differing levels of vetting and training: one operator was a contractor and required to hold an SIA licence, while the other was in-house and therefore exempt from SIA licensing. While the MAI only suggested licensing of in-house CCTV operatives, the same logic applies to extending licensing to other in-house operatives, the document states.
In his foreword, Dan Jarvis called the consultation ‘genuine’; the document says that ‘the Home Office does not have any preferred policy options, and all options including not taking any action, are open for consideration’.
Numbers
A ‘central estimate’ of the number of in-house operatives who do not hold an SIA licence is 106,000 (some in-house staff do hold an SIA badge, although they don’t legally have to; the ‘central estimate’ of the total of in-house security operatives is 156,000). The Home Office puts the number of security businesses (that would come under what’s suggested) at about 7000, which is predicted to rise to about 8000 over a ten-year ‘appraisal period’.
Business licensing
As for licensing of security businesses by the SIA, the regulator has always run an Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS), soon to be called the Business Approval Scheme (BAS); but that’s, as the document describes, a ‘voluntary quality scheme’; not taken up by most of the thousands of security contractors doing SIA-licensable work, typically door security and guarding. The document notes that the sector has ‘identified concerns relating to business fraud, tax evasion, training fraud and illegal employment practices by rogue firms which undercut reputable firms and drive down standards, but the SIA does not have the appropriate tools under the PSIA 2001 [the Private Security Industry Act, which led to the setting up of the regulator] to take enforcement action’. The Arena Inquiry as the document points out ‘found that two security companies at the Arena had been in breach of the PSIA 2001, with one deploying unlicensed individuals and the other not licensing any staff due to being mistakenly seen as an in-house employer. This the chair noted “demonstrates the lack of effective enforcement measures to ensure that the requirements of the 2001 Act are carried out’.
Expansion
If the Home Office were to go ahead with security business licensing and badging of in-house staff doing SIA-licensable tasks, that would only add to the extra work the SIA has on its plate. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 that became law in April made the SIA the regulator and inspector for what’s generally known as Martyn’s Law; a legal responsibility on premises, typically pubs and clubs, hospitals and places of worship, concert venues and halls, to take steps to counter the threat of terrorism. In recent years the SIA has roughly doubled its staff to 400 as a response to the Arena Inquiry.
Finance
The SIA works (as a separate consultation options assessment states) on a ‘cost recovery basis’. The regulator has been able to afford all its extra work because its main source of income is £184 three-year licence fees from individuals, and a record number of individuals are SIA-badged; at the end of 2025, about 460,000. The Security Industry Authority annual report and accounts 2024 to 2025 noted a ‘spike towards March 2025 [that] corresponds with a spike in student visa holders applying for licences and a growing number of applicants from other nationalities’. The report also stated that the SIA has ‘increased intelligence-led joint inspection activity and information sharing with Home Office Immigration and Enforcement, particularly where we suspect visa abuses and exploitation of operatives working on overseas student visas’.
Some background
The SIA is an ‘executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office’; since it formed in the early 2000s it’s been based in London, though last year it announced that its Martyn’s Law work would be based in Manchester.
Photo by Mark Rowe: stairs leading from Manchester Victoria station to the Arena.
