The IFSEC conference heard a call for a register of guarding companies, as the next step in SIA licensing.
Stuart Lowden, MD of guarding contractor Wilson James, admitted that SIA enforcement had to be discreet; the SIA could not say publicly who it was investigating or prosecuting, until a case came to court. But the guarding industry had imagined that the SIA was doing nothing; because the sector expected to hear of enforcement. Fortunately, Stuart Lowden went on, successful prosecutions against companies small and large – Securiplan and Sabrewatch – have ‘restored a little bit of faith in the process’. He suggested that the SIA might go from enforcing the door staff badge rules in pubs and clubs to ‘deeper cover’ investigations, which would bring back the perception that the SIA was doing nothing (visible). “As an industry we are going to have to give them [the SIA] a little bit of trust and patience,” Stuart Lowden said. It was for the SIA to tell the guarding industry what enforcement was going on.
Asking what have we gained out of licensing, he said: “We have gained a bit of credibility and self-respect for staff; at the lower end, it has reduced criminality. And there is no question there is now some entry-level training that did not exist before.” That is, there was no more putting people in a uniform and sending them out. Although there was talk of malpractice in training, it had been eradicated or exaggerated, he added. On the minus side? The SIA’s approved contractor scheme has if anything created confusion for buyers, because there is such disparity between the lower and top end of the 650 or so companies approved (mainly in guarding). At the top end, customers ultimately now look on licensing as nothing but a tax, ‘because they see no direct benefit that has come out of licensing’.
On the Home Office decision to keep in-house security guards out of the SIA licence regime, Stuart Lowden repeated it was for political reasons; the retail sector, in particular, putting their weight behind staying out. Door staff in-house and contract however are SIA-badged; ‘there’s no logic for it … and that undermines the fabric of licensing’. It only requires one dodgy in-house guard to appear in the News of the World, and the whole industry is tainted, he added. This is not an issue the BSIA is going to drop, he stressed.
On guarding standards, Stuart Lowden spoke of the NSI gold award as seen by many as a higher standard than ACS, ‘which is a shame’, he said, because it should have been an equivalent. He praised the NSI’s contract quality marque, unveiled last autumn and featured in our December 2009 issue, to allow for guard firms and their clients to differentiate, and for the industry to stretch itself to higher standards. “There is a clear case for having a registered company scheme,” he said. “That must be the biggest single priority for the SIA – everything else is tinkering around the margins. Differentiation [of security providers] is something the industry has to resolve and the industry has to drive forward on standards. It’s not for the SIA to drive standards … I think the SIA is here to stay; I don’t think the new Government will change that; it might change the focus, it might make it [the SIA] focus more on enforcement and less on standards.” Commenting afterwards, conference chair Mike Bluestone, chairman of The Security Institute, made the point that a buyer of guarding could be more discerning about the ACS due to the mark each company gained. He regarded registration of guarding companies as an excellent idea. He seconded Lowden that standards were for the industry to sort out, rather than the SIA.
