The SIA Journey: Have we gone far enough? Was the title of the Security Industry Authority’s third conference. It implied that the regulator might have yet wider work to do. But that would put the cart before the horse, Mark Rowe writes.
The SIA conference at Manchester Central on May 21 was the day after an evening reception at nearby Manchester Town Hall. While the SIA was pleased with the near-200 audience at the conference, there were some striking absences. For instance Bobby Speirs could not be there. As the press and local radio reported, the ‘gangland boss’ (The Times), a security company director, was starting a life sentence for murder after he was found guilty at Manchester crown court of conspiracy to commit murder. Briefly, Speirs by mobile phone arranged the shooting of a rival in a Salford pub – only the two hitmen were shot dead instead. And as featured in Professional Security Magazine in April 2009, three Sunderland men were jailed for attacking members of a rival security firm as their car was stopped at traffic lights. While on the platform Andy Drane the acting SIA chief executive did praise the work with Strathclyde Police so far against security companies in that part of Scotland with links to serious and organised crime, it is plainly not a problem confined to Glasgow.<br><br>Someone else who could not be there was Mohamed Kaleem Rafeek, a Manchester doorman who was stabbed to death in Rusholme in March. For a full article visit this link – <br><br>https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/newsdetails.aspx?NewsArticleID=11717&imgID=1<br><br>Nor could the MITIE guard be there who was working from the gatehouse of the British Gas office at Old Trafford. At 8am and 9am, while conference-goers were breakfasting, he had clipboard in hand, and was checking and nodding through drivers turning off Talbot Road to enter the car park to go to work. One point raised at the conference – and though the two very different men above were not mentioned, the event was notable for how much got an airing – was that the problem before the SIA had not really been the guards – they did their job, low-paid and low or untrained though it was – but the companies. The recent decision not to licence in-house security officers cropped up, and someone asked: if (as the SIA had explained) in-house was not badged because there was not enough of a risk to the public, why licence the private security industry in the first place? For one moment in the air was the upsetting idea that all the trouble, the tens of millions of pounds, the £245 every three years asked of tens of thousands of security guards on or just above minimum wage – that had all been a waste because the regulator had achieved little or nothing that would not have happened anyway?!<br><br>It got worse. Far from professionalising the sector and raising standards, was the SIA in fact a force for making the guarding market worse?! <br><br>In a morning seminar on the approved contractor scheme (ACS) – another topic that had a full airing – Stuart Lowden, the BSIA chairman and director of contract guarding company Wilson James said: "I have got a deep concern deep concern about the ACS; the inspection of it is not as robust as it could be. We [Wilson James] certainly have examples of contracts we have taken over where staff clearly haven’t had any proper training and perhaps more worringly no management support, no supervision; and one of the impacts of the ACS as we have discussed in the past, is that buyers use it [ACS] as a means of buying by price." That is, if two or more contractors seeking a contract are each holders of the ACS, a buyer will choose between them by price. As a consequence, a contractor can put less money into management and training; and that can mean a de-layering of the chain of command. ‘It worries me that if the inspection regime is not looking for the right things if it [the ACS inspection] is too process driven and does not understand the impact on services when things go wrong – this will get worse. If I was asking [the SIA] to address one thing; perhaps make inspectors a little more streetwise, on what is going on out there." <br><br>Andrew Shephard and Rob Dye of the SIA had spoken earlier on where the ACS stood and where it might go. An ‘assessor strategy review’ proposed to reduce the number of assessment bodies from seven to four. The assessment bodies – the traditional security ones such as the NSI and the SSAIB having been joined by several others when the ACS began in 2006 – will have to re-tender in September; and expect an announcement on who doesn’t stay in, in December-January. The reason for the cut in numbers – the SIA feels that some assessors do not have enough to do with the ACS – in other words, fewer assessors could do all the work, and, to answer Stuart Lowden’s point, do enough assessments so that they become more ‘street-wise’. <br><br>An important point in passing: the SIA cannot win; whatever decision it makes – deciding against in-house officer badging for instance – will anger some. Over lunch, one contractor spoke to Professional Security of unhappiness if the assessment body their company was working with, lost out. It would mean more work for the contractor, which had its day job to do – of satisfying clients who were keeping to strict financial controls and if anything seeking to tighten budgets. Equally, I have queried if the SIA is inspecting in out of the way places, such as Nairn in northern Scotland. To be fair, the SIA is publicising checks on doormen – recently for example in mid-Wales. But – the opposite point – does the SIA best use its time by checking a few door badges in Llandrindod Wells?! Compared with the doors of big cities?<br><br>Still in the ACS morning seminar, one door trainer – himself a former door man who still does door work – spoke of ‘deep-seated practices’ by door companies, and abuse of licence dispensation notices (LDNs), which ACS-approved companies can give to new starters while they await their licence. But what are the checks on a trainee or newcomer being given one LDN after another? He asked. He too spoke of violence having increased in his decades on doors, so that he wears an anti-stab vest. A gang culture among young people has come and youths see nothing wrong in carrying knives; nor do they fear consequences. Door staff have to be what the trainer called ‘weekend psychologists’ and he doubted if all those who pass the door training course are equipped to work a door. And then holders of a door licence can still work as a licenced security guard – but not the other way around. <br><br>As Stuart Lowden hinted, concerns over the ACS are not new. Nor are fears about shortcomings in training that debase the guard (or door or CCTV operator or close protection) badge, and not just the individual holder who does the four-day course in two, but every holder of the same badge. Some trainers such as Carl Mannion of Merseyside-based NEET Futures CIC raised this in an afternoon session on industry ‘threats and opportunities’. It was interesting that Simi Bath of the SIA accepted what people from the floor said – until someone raised the most devastating point, that the exact complaint had been raised two years ago at the SIA’s first annual conference in Leicester – about training standards not being enforced, and the authorities not acting against trainers making short cuts. Did it mean that these same complaints would be aired in another two years? Simi Bath disagreed. Reasonably acting SIA chief exec Andy Drane, and indeed as the SIA has said earlier, made the point that the SIA is not a regulator of training – that is for the awarding bodies and the qualifications regulator the QCA. If the SIA were to take that on, that extra work would take money, and (presumably) a higher licence fee to make more income – another case where the SIA could not win, could not help but anger someone (everyone?). Andy Drane did accept that training failings were the SIA’s business in that it reflected on the badge. <br><br>One point that no-one raised was that while some ACS assessment bodies were represented on the day – such as stalwart Geoff Tate of SSAIB – nobody was there from one of the award bodies – Edexcel, City & Guilds, British Institute of Innkeeping. Which was a sign of how seriously they take the problem?! To repeat, nothing is not known. It’s even known why people are reluctant to report training shortcomings – it came up and got reported in the notes, at a recent network meeting. Someone who pays hundreds of pounds and passes the training necessary for a licence but is coached through the exam paper the day before the exam, for example, is hardly going to press on with a complaint for fear that the time and money and his licence – his very livelihood – is at risk. <br><br>Those who were at the Leicester conference could enjoy the recollection of – when training malpractice cropped up – of how Baroness Henig the SIA chairman putting Linda Sharpe, then of Skills for Security, on the spot. (Which raises the question – were none of the awarding bodies at Leicester either? Will they turn up in 2011?!) Now Linda Sharpe addressed the same question, but on the stage as board member of the SIA. David Greer, Skills for Security chief, did tackle the question from the floor, offering to field complaints and pass them on. But the uncomfortable fact was that the people whose job it is to act on training wrong-doings were not in the room. <br><br>What else? Little or nothing said about private investigators. Baroness Henig in her morning speech did say that PIs – and bailiffs – would be badged by 2012. One of the private investigators attending did raise with Professional Security the point that licensing was three years off – which was the same as last year. Certainly the patience is wearing out of those limited number of PIs willing to put themselves out to work on regulating the sector, besides their day jobs. <br><br>Little was said – nor were many people attending from – the wheel clamping sector. Yet having a second go at licensing the ‘vehicle immobilisation’ sector is likely to be one of the main tasks of the SIA in the next year or two. Baroness Henig in conversation at the Manchester Town Hall pre-conference reception and in similar terms in her public speech explained: ministers, politicians, work according to their mailbag. In other words, this is the political equivalent of the SIA’s stated aims which include protecting the public, from crime and terrorism. People, voters, are worked up about bailiffs and wheel clampers being allegedly heavy-handed. Now Baroness Henig did not last decades as a Lancashire county councillor without being as attuned to what voters say they want. Baroness Henig and other speakers – indeed the very title of the conference – suggested that the SIA and security industry are on a journey together. With a journey comes responsibilities – cash (for the petrol), power and influence (who’s holding the map, who says where we’re all going?). And to return to training malpractice, or the dispute over whether in-house guards should be badged like contract officers; it’s for the industry to give evidence to make a case for a change, as it involves costs. The government, in a recession, and with an election having to come within a year, does not want to put more regulatory burdens on people – as was the topic of a half-hour talk on the ‘better regulation agenda’ by Graeme McCabe, of the Better Regulation team at the Home Office. <br><br>A morning talk was by a young politics academic from the University of Sheffield, Dr Adam White, who spoke on the history of the UK private security industry and moves towards regulation, since the 1950s (part of ‘the journey’). He did show that the road to regulation, the road to here, was far from certain, and hardly predictable in past decades. Something not brought out – and an easy trap for the security or any other sector of industry to fall into – was how private security only has part of a say over its own destiny. It depends at least partly on outside factors – the government, police, public opinion. Did those campaigners for regulation that Dr White made so much of, like RD Godfrey of Securicor in the 1950s, the BSIA and Bruce George MP, envisage or demand a Security Industry Authority that had under its umbrella wheel clampers and enforcement agents (bailiffs) and door supervisers? And consultants and private investigators, who are in the Private Security Industry Act 2001, are still unbadged. <br><br>As was said on the day by some: as the title suggests, on a journey you know who you are travelling with. The SIA has been going for six years, issuing licences for four or more. People know one another, and the pros and cons. They know who are the back seat drivers, who are striking up annoying songs at the back of the bus; who is trying to ride without a ticket. And who is not on the bus at all.
Response
An exam awards body responds to this online article after the SIA conference, specifically comments relating to ‘training shortcomings’.
Firstly, I would like to reassure readers that BIIAB takes such allegations extremely seriously. The success of our awarding business depends on the quality of our product, and, more importantly, as apart of the professional body for licensed retail, in our credibility in the market place. The two issues are inextricably linked. We are regulated in England and Wales by Ofqual and accredited in Scotland by the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Both organisations require that awarding bodies have the systems, structures, strategies and polices to ensure that awards we make to individuals are worthy of their status as national qualifications. Any allegation of malpractice is responded to immediately and appropriate action taken against a centre if malpractice is evidenced. Herein lies the problem. Despite allegations made against various training companies over
the years, very few investigations, some of which have been conducted by the police, have resulted in absolute evidence of malpractice during training or at the point of examination. I am sure I can speak for our other awarding body colleagues as well as BIIAB, when I say that we will continue to encourage those who have knowledge of malpractice to inform us of their concerns. Be assured that we will do everything that we can, legally, to make sure that our qualifications are awarded in a fair, consistent and quality controlled manner.
Cathie Smith
BIIAB director
www.biiab.org
