Coming to a desk near you in the new year: the January print issue of Professional Security Magazine
From the editorial:
“Even before the birth of the SIA I said it would be unnecessary and the legislation was crap.” So an old contact emailed me last month. A new contact, a security guard, rang to complain, first, of the Security Industry Authority’s ‘find an approved contractor’ postcode search on their website. He said his firm had lost work to a national contractor. He challenged me to try my postcode. I did, an old home address (not Professional Security’s WV10, I stress!). An approved guarding firm that I knew was a couple of miles away did not show up on the five mile search. It showed up as 11 miles away. Aha! I thought. Until I clicked on the company and found it has moved to the next town. Not that I would recommend it anyway, from what I know of it. The guard’s other complaints were of continued illegal working by door staff and others, and the SIA investigators not giving feedback on his tip-offs. Nothing. Go around and talk to people, and you keep hearing this. To be fair, the SIA investigator, like any other, can hardly give a running commentary about his or her work. Nor would a commercial company under investigation take kindly to its affairs being emailed or texted around. A more valid query is whether the authority’s investigators are fly enough to do checks at the difficult times and places. Great, check Inverness one weekend (page 14), but how about weekend after weekend? What should worry the SIA is that these two critics I tell of are the authority’s natural allies. One I met in 2003 at one of those SIA roadshows when people were shocked to hear the licence’d cost £150. The other, the guard, is trying to help. It is never wise to squander goodwill.
I can tell it’ll look as if I have it in for authority, because I didn’t come away from the Public CCTV Managers Association Christmas lunch too cheered about the national CCTV strategy (page 32), as featured last issue. The body leading it is that well-known force in CCTV, the National Policing Improvement Agency (www.npia.police.uk). It by the way does offer a monthly digest of policing things you can download.
With relief I can say there are good things to report. I did mention the Skills for Security conference award winners last month but wanted to devote a proper article to some of the good work recognised (page 30). And news from industry’s bodies running seminars and conferences and even a ball. In training as in representing the industry, it’s always only a few people that put the work in on behalf of the rest of us (pages 44, 46). If you have made any new year’s resolutions, and I never do, doing just an hour a week or a month for the greater good, if thousands or millions of us did it, would add up to a great deal.
Before Christmas my diary began filling up with dates for January and February, and I had not even bought a 2008 diary yet. All being well I will be at the January meeting of Ex-Police in Commerce, because for one thing I got fed royally last time, and I will definitely be at the IIPSEC exhibition from January 29 to 31 (preview, from page 64). So see you there?
