Toothless behemoth was how one manager of guards described the Security Industry Authority. Mark Rowe ponders anecdotes.
He works for a non-SIA approved contractor, some door work, some guarding. Strange that such an overtly masculine sector as doors should be, in his word โcattyโ about rivals.
He gave the example of how a rival door company put in to the SIA an allegation about the managerโs unbadged door staff. The premises concerned got a strongly-worded letter from the SIA investigator, but, so the manager went on, once he took the matter up, there was no evidence in it. As the manager said, if the SIA says it has done x number of investigations, what does an โinvestigationโ amount to?
There are still claims of unbadged contract security guards hiding as in-house guards. Itโs claimed that people in private security do report to the SIA such abuses but they donโt see anything changing.
Then there is the cost of badging someone to do the jobs of, say, a door man, CCTV operator, wheel clamper and a security guard, or a combination. A complaint is that you have to pay for a licence for each, at a cost of perhaps £800: why not have an all in one. Some companies – like this managerโs – pay for an employeeโs licence application, and if the guard leaves after two years of the three-year licence, the guard has to pay back the one year fraction. Some other companies make the guard pay the £245.
Another complaint of this manager is one persistently heard in private security: that of corner-cutting on the training necessary for the licence application. The training ought to be four days, but this manager gave the story of a trainerโs first comment being โdo you wnt me to do it in two?โ The trainer knows that he can run through the course in two days, and that it is in the interest of the guard manager to make it two, because it costs less to have guards in the classroom for two days than four. It is impossible to say how much of this goes on, or how much the SIA badge is at risk of being debased. Meanwhile if anything the talk is of the licence requiring more training – perhaps in first aid or health and safety – not less.
Besides enforcement, the crunch for all licensing, there is the matter of a guard meeting the requirements of the criminal record check, but, in this managerโs case, a question over whether anyone would want to employ such a character. He gave the example of a guard that left owing £200. The guard was reported to the police for dishonesty. The money was paid back, so the police took the view that they would take no further action. According to the criminal justice system, and the Criminal Records Bureau that carries out the record check towards the SIA licence, that man has no criminal record and is fit for an SIA licence; but would you want to employ a dishonest guard? How then to get stricter standards if the criminal justice system has such shortcomings, to do with the recording and prosecution of โpettyโ theft and fraud?
A word about such stories, that – as with anything – you could dismiss as anecdotal. Opinions are like bottoms, everyone has one. But bottoms are widespread, and so are such anecdotes. Incidentally everyone describes themselves as working to the rules; one never seems to meet someone who says they are dodgy.
There are the sunshine people out there who would not recognise the above. Why rock the boat? indeed. Because if the above is reality, reality has a habit of biting on the bottom. Or to put it more politely: when I was 18 and started university, I read in the library all I could about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. I was, I remember, quite surprised and disappointed that historians had not worked out why the Roman Empire had fallen. One idea was that the coinage had been so debased by bad emperors that it was too bad for the economy. No-one is going to suggest that civilisation is going to fall because of a debased badge. But the wearers of guarding and doormen and wheel clamper badges and so on, and the buyers of their services, will come to a view on the worth of the currency of that badge, if they have not already.
None of this is unknown to the SIA. They say the same sort of things, in finer terms, in their strategy documents: about how difficult it is to catch the cowboys, the ones who the whole regime is intended to deal with; about how the SIAโs work is โproportionateโ.
Meanwhile the recent ACPO-Home Office CCTV strategy offered the prospect of registration of CCTV users. A licence, in other words, to use CCTV. Quangoes such as the SIA or the Information Commissionerโs Office have a habit of taking on more sectors. There is a logic. The manager quoted above wondered aloud if in-house guards ought to be licenced by the SIA; might that bring in more revenue so that you would not need to pay twice for two badges? Might that mean more investigators? Or more of the above.
