In the November print issue of Professional Security magazine, Mark Button asked whether the security industry really wants to go back to the Wild West without SIA regulation. Our regular writer Peter Whitehead picks up the subject.
Mark wrote that the SIA is no longer a burden on the tax payer, in which case the Government would not be thinking of scrapping it! It costs all right …. much more than any white elephant, which might be what SIA chief executive Mr Butler had in mind when he mentioned ‘the elephant in the room’.
Corrupt and incompetent practice in the Wild West?. There was some, and still is. Television’s ‘Rogue Traders’ team did more than the SIA to highlight bad ‘SIA licensed’ wheel-clampers; and the fact that ‘clamping’ will be outlawed by Act of Parliament shows us that the SIA is powerless to control its sectors.
Ruthless competition out West? On the day that approved contractor status came into being the MD of a large security contractor gleefully telephoned retailers to explain that their security contractors were not SIA-approved and therefore should be cast out in favour of his own services. One small SD contractor had to decide whether to submit to the crushing costs of reaching approved contractor status or give up. The SIA ‘gunned down’ many small, decent, valuable companies and then waved their bodies in the air to show some success. I hope that ‘cartel-type’ approved contractor status will be ended, to give smaller companies a chance to start up and survive.
Limited training out West? I recently had a disagreement with one of the biggest approved contractors in Britain because it did not produce full AIs, but just dumped ‘outline instructions’ onto sites which it called ‘generic’ AIs. This company considered my suggestion to include a clear description of every patrol, duty and inspection into the AIs (as in the old days!) to be some sort of personal fixation. So the SIA control has created gaps as well as filling a few in.
Under SIA training requirements I was sent to qualify as a conflict management trainer and the three day course cost about £2000. To gain a SIA-routed teaching qualification (7302) would have cost a similar amount but instead I went to the better adult-teacher 7307 course at Canterbury College for £256! Many expensive SIA-type qualifications (7302?) have lapsed so that trainers have had to requalify at further expense. It’s all a training money-go-round.
Mark explains that without the SIA there will be no avenue of complaint. The SIA does not respond to reported crimes but can only refer informants to the police. Surely Police Community Support Officers or Special Constables could more easily report non-licensed offenders than a few expensive SIA operatives? I don’t think that SIA investigators have warrants, so they cannot have similar freedom of movement …. all expensive and unnecessary!
Mark writes that we will go back to widespread criminal infiltration, which just reads like hysteria to me. With the SIA’s advent, many honest babies got chucked out with the dirty bathwater. I once knew scores of honest, brilliant, valuable part-time store detectives and now there are almost none. I wrote in this magazine about the repeat-crimes of some SIA licensed security operatives a few months ago, which some approved companies just quietly get rid of.
I believe that we should be licensed by an employment screening centre which could also scrutinise the records of other workers. Next year many cleaners, hire-car drivers, tradespersons and anybody else who works in proximity of minors or elderly will need to be screened, and required college training qualifications could be submitted with applications and a very small fee.
