Will SIA take action if you are not using licensed CCTV operators?
Because statistically the chances are that your operators do not have a licence yet – and if they fall under the Private Security Industry Act, they are breaking the law.
David Mann, security manager at the University of Glamorgan, gave an update on CCTV to the AUCSO conference. Since March 20, as with contract guarding officers, CCTV operators doing public space surveillance under contract need a SIA licence. Given that only a fraction of CCTV operators met the deadline, David Mann related some of the options taken by control room managers: some city centre systems simply shutting their systems, and only recording; not paying the contractor; suspending fees and invoicing at a later date; buying-in the contracted control room staff and “selling” back later – that is, transfering operators under TUPE to “in house” until their licences come; using a monitoring centre; poaching staff who already have licences; and golden handshakes, of up to £750, he reported, being offered by some security guarding companies.
Looking beyond the current logjam of licences, David Mann asked: what training will be needed in two to three years? He answered that AUCSO and the CCTV User Group training Committee was to review needs. Among uestions were: should training be general or modular? Should supervisors have separate training? And should there be tiered training?
As of April 27 – the week of the AUCSO conference, more than a month after the March 20 deadline for several sectors – there were 1,712 applications on system, and a mere 468 licences granted. As to how many CCTV operators ought to have a licence, the SIA website speaks of 5,593 ‘qualified people’, although some in CCTV speak of tens of thousands requiring a licence for doing CCTV monitoring as part of their work, perhaps for a third party. Incidentally a couple of other sectors where licences have not taken off are close protection (applications on system 589; licences granted, 180) and key-holding (28 applications on system, six granted). As with the contract guarding licence backlog, within CCTV there has been since March 20 an element of blame-gaming: the SIA has argued that the security industry has not met a deadline that it knew of well in advance; while CCTV control room managers have responded that the SIA’s processing delays, a lack of trainers – and the need to send only some operators at a time for training, given the need to keep the control room going – made it in practice impossible to meet the March deadline.
Meanwhile, there is a background of cost pressures, certainly on local authority CCTV, whether monitored in-house or by contract staff. Peterborough City Council, for instance, has a 141-camera system. In a full report of its activities on the council’s website, Peterborough reports that in July 2005 a newly-created post was of CCTV Control Room Supervisor The council’s control room is now staffed by the supervisor and ten operators, who work a part time, 30-hour week. They cover 24-365; that cover is the equivalent of 8.1 full-time posts. According to the website: “Such staffing levels, the ratio to the number of cameras and the demands from other partners limits the time available to proactively monitor and not just respond to incidents. If adequate staffing levels are to be achieved additional revenue will need to be generated. The monitoring of alarm activated CCTV cameras at public buildings provides one such opportunity.”
