Some notes ahead of the Security Industry Authority second conference, in Leeds on Friday, May 16.
Regulators generally are, to quote a minister, to get ‘most value out of the effort that they make’, to be ‘risk-based, proportionate and targeted’. That’s according to a code that came into force on April 6. <br><br>The Regulators’ Compliance Code aimed at regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive speaks in terms of risk. It speaks of a principle of ‘no inspection without a reason’ and using ‘only a small element of random inspection’. One of the Hampton Principles, arising after an earlier review: regulators should be accountable for their efficiency and effectiveness. <br><br>The code from Better Regulation Executive, part of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) is meant to ‘encourage regulators to achieve their objectives in a way that minimises the burdens on business’. According to the code: “Effective and well-targeted regulation is essential in promoting fairness and protection from harm.” <br><br>However, regulators need not be bound by the code. And as a regulator is not going for 100 per cent crackdowns but is merely ‘proportionate’ even ‘against the few businesses that consistently break regulations’, there appears the danger that a regulator may set itself targets, that it can meet, which would not necessarily be the same as doing more difficult things that would however root out worse non-compliance. The code does touch on this problem, calling on regulators to ‘measure outcomes not just outputs’. <br><br>In other words, the danger is a tick-box regulatory regime. In private security terms: it’s all very well for a SIA, local authority and police inspector to check a doorman’s badge at a club door at 9pm, but data about how many people have their valid badges isn’t much of an outcome if there’s drug-dealing and drink-related violence the rest of the night inside the venue. <br><br>Which can lead us on to one of the topics at the SIA May 16 conference in Leeds: whether in-house security officers should have to have a licence like their contract guarding counterparts. At the May 2007 conference in Leicester, this was raised from the floor. Why, it was asked, should a contract firm have to pay for training and a licence application, when they are trying to compete for work? The other point of view – not raised at the event, presumably because security manager buyers were either not there or did not raise their voices – is that in-house set-ups can choose to employ who they like because it’s a free country, and if it’s someone who is without a badge, untrained and so on, that is the employer’s look-out. A more political question is whether corporate Britain would take kindly to having to pay for badges for security reception staff to do the same job they are doing already. <br><br>Other topics come under the umbrella of how well the regulator is doing what is on its plate already: such as compliance and enforcement. And: how can the SIA deliver better value for the 450 and counting companies that are paying for approved contractor status? As reported recently in Professional Security Magazine, some ACS company people will say they cannot see a reason for the effort and cost of approval, except that they have the dispensation to deploy up to 15 per cent of officers while they wait for a licence application to go through. <br><br>The trouble is, inefficency is built into the system. You could argue, there is no point for the regulator to try to become less efficient – though door staff complain about having to stop work while they wait for their badge renewal – because there is a revenue stream from ACS companies staying approved to use dispensations. <br><br>One of the Friday topics is how to ‘sell’ the ACS more to buyers, yet all along government has not set a lead by requiring suppliers to be ACS.<br><br>And some readers do recall – as reported last time by Professional Security Magazine – some of the pointed questions that get to the root of the shortcomings of the regulatory regime, as asked at the first SIA conference in May 2007. Such as: how come security officers, who can hardly string words together in English, are SIA-badged? What does that say about training standards? And where is the personal accountability? Has anything changed in a year?<br><br>Link to the text of Mike Wilson, SIA chief exec’s letter to security companies on SIA performance:
