And directors at three other guarding firms have chatted to Professional Security.
March 20, 2006 will be an important date, a guarding MD said; but so will March 20, 2007. By that later date, how many prosecutions will there be; how many officers licenced; what will officer pay rates be, and will those rates stay there? What of the opinion that the police’s community safety accreditation scheme (CSAS) might overlap with the SIA’s licensing, even be a loophole? The MD disagreed; the law [Private Security Industry Act] is that security officers have to have a licence, and when a guard-force is inspected, to say you are accredited by a police force will be no excuse; the inspector will want to see your SIA licence. For this MD, the police’s CSAS was an argument for in-house security officers to be licenced. His fear was that in-house teams will be a refuge for those who cannot get a licence. The MD knows of some in-house security operations going for SIA licences – he knows, because his trainers are training them. His summing up? “Interesting times.”
MD’s returned application
That was a phrase used by another guard company MD, who has had his licence application returned, for an error in documentation. He described his firm as battening down the hatches, to get officer applications sent to the SIA, and to make sure that an officer’s application has passed. That the answer is posted to the individual means that the employer has to ask the individual to know if someone needs to re-apply – indeed, without asking each individual, the company cannot know how many of its officers are badged. This MD was keen to keep the SIA to its March 20 deadline, having had to take officers off duty to make sure that application forms are filled in correctly. Getting accompanying documents from some staff as proof of identity has been difficult, officers perhaps not being sure of the whereabouts of a birth certificate, or not owning a passport or credit card. The MD doubted whether guarding companies not geared up now to get officers through the licence process would make the March deadline: “It’s taken us months to get to this stage.” He suggested that guard firms would seek to specialise, to survive – his firm certainly was doing so – possible specialisms in the market being facilities management; car parking, and CCTV monitoring; or being strong thanks to local knowledge around your offices. And – not for the first year – it meant that you could not predict what would happen.
No future outside ACS
A ‘nightmare’ was how a guarding chief exec described licensing; he too had had his application returned over the supporting documentation. Another of the firm’s executives reported that the company had thought of buying a hotel, rather than spend thousands of pounds on accommodation for residential training courses – money off the bottom line. His company was going for the ‘voluntary’ approved contractor scheme (ACS) status – ‘there’s no future for any guarding company that doesn’t’. He spoke of a couple of enlightened potential clients not wanting to deal with any guard firm but an ACS one. This company, too, made the point that it was having to chase oficers to ensure that the paperwork had gone to the SIA; and that alerts about licence were not more memos to ignore. All this said, the company has finished its staff training and is confident it will make March 20. And having gone to all the trouble and costs, the company sees that it will have to retain staff, partly through welfare benefits. However, the executive wondered how good SIA enforcement would be – would inspectors be more likely to ask for security officer badges in a department store than on city centre streets at midnight?
