The SIA’s or any other regulation is only as good as its enforcement. Hence many of those at the Leeds conference chose to attend the afternoon seminar on compliance and enforcement. Professional Security was there too.
Ken Chan of the Better Regulation Executive (BRE) – a former Toronto policeman – began by explaining how any regulator should work. The BRE (www.betterregulation.gov.uk) is part of the Department for Business and Regulation, the old Department for Trade and Industry. The regulators’ compliance code came out in April, arising from the Hampton review dating from 2005. All regulators have to consider the code. So a regulator ought to be business-friendly, only lightly touching those that are doing the right things. There are five Hampton principles for a regulator: to be proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted. <br><br>Andy Drane, as SIA director of compliance, and acting chief exec in the half-year between former chief exec John Saunders leaving and current chief exec Mike Wilson joining in September 2007, is, as Andy Drane – a former Essex and Avon and Somerset police officer – said, the architect of the authority’s current compliance strategy. He began by going over the scale of the challenge. There are an estimated 2500 security companies; 200,000 people in England, Wales and Scotland at any time working in licensable sectors; and thousands and thousands of sites where badged staff work. And the SIA has limited resources. The investigators have no power of arrest, though Andy Drane did not think that the investigators needed that power; nor does the SIA have the power to enter customer sites. He said that he has at most 45 investigators to call on; and he spoke of a ‘mismatch between demand and ability to deploy’. <br><br>As for how not to do it, he argued that it did not make sense to respond to every individual complaint, because that would mean being driven by the demand of the day, and if the regulator was not careful, it would be driven by those shouting the loudest, and not driven by priority. Prosecuting offenders is not the SIA’s main tool, he stressed; it is a tool, but not an ideal one, because it is ‘hugely expensive and time-consuming’, which is not to say it will not be used, he added. Other tools usually produce quicker and better results. <br><br>What does intelligence-led actually mean? Andy Drane asked. Analysis of information, he answered. Seeing what patterns emerge, and then come priorities: "Clearly with the resources we have, we cannot address everything. That means sometimes we will not address what you as an individual tell us about. It is about making well-judged choices between the various things we can do." As with 45 investigators the SIA is going to be ‘spread pretty thinly’, it works with others. Most operations are done by police; the SIA does some of its own. The police, being on the ground, know like the local authorities, what and who are the risks. The SIA concentrates on managers and customers, that is, those who make the choices of maybe employing unlicensed officers. The SIA, then, is telling corporate Britain. Andy Drane said that in one or two cases the authority is reminding customers that if they [the corporate customer] collude with a criminal supplier, they the client could be aiding a crime. Andy Drane said that the police have been very effective, for example where intimidation on building sites makes it far too dangerous for SIA investigators. <br><br>Rather like his speech to the 2007 conference, Andy Drane spoke in terms of a range of ‘offending behaviours’ under the Private Security Industry Act (PSIA). At the extremes you have organised criminals, and at the bottom you have those genuinely not meaning not to comply. In between, you may have those who are ‘chancing their arm’, and those who are deliberately and systematically not complying. More and more police, Andy Drane said, are buying into the PSIA, to tackle intimidation and protection rackets. The SIA is most likely to prosecute where there is that deliberate and systematic non-compliance. Andy Drane spoke of a line between acting formally and informally against those breaking the law. An informal (that is, not going through the courts) approach is cheap and for SIA and security offender alike it’s good, provided it delivers compliance, ‘which in most cases it does’. Such informality is difficult to tell the rest of the security industry about, as Andy Drane pointed out. <br><br>He admitted that the 660 or so items of information a month given to the SIA were ‘the lifeblood of an intelligence-led approach’ to enforcement. The best quality information, which he termed also ‘the most actionable’ comes through the Crimestoppers 0800 crime reporting line. "There is a good reason for that; Crimestoppers is a 24-7 operation and operators are trained to ask questions and pass it on. That is definitely our best source of information." And in the last year there have been about 1800 disclosures to other partners, especially the police, but also the UK Border Agency, the Department of Work and Pensions, and the Child Support Agency. <br><br>As for how much compliance there is out there, Andy Drane suggested it is 90 per cent plus. "I suppose what I am telling you; there is going to be no big change in the way we operate." And that is for three reasons: the SIA’s ‘business reality’; it’s following good practice; and it is obliged to follow the compliance code for UK regulators. <br><br>From the floor, audience members raised frustrations that they did not hear about what the SIA did. Ian Pugh, national security manager at contractor Europa, spoke of the SIA quoting data protection to do with members of staff. Another complaint from the audience was never knowing what the SIA is doing against unregulated companies or deployment of unlicensed officers. As Andy Drane said, accepting the criticism, where the SIA deals with something informally, it remains private between SIA and that company; while a case going through the courts may come out a long time later. Another member of the audience questioned whether there was enough of a deterrent out there. Andy Drane pointed to 90pc compliance and that the SIA was not reluctant to prosecute. One contractor spoke of their company having nine levels from chief executive to the front line security officer, and claimed there was no real clarity as to who needed to be licenced; how to know who in the chain of command required a licence, maybe at prohibitive cost? <br><br>Someone else spoke of being disappointed with 90pc compliance, and queried whether the SIA was looking at the higher end sites, and not the lower end sites. Drane answered: "We will never get to 100 per cent compliance." Here he raised the BBC1 TV Panorama documentary which did at least show that the Merseyside Police Operation Seahog against intimidation by security contractors at Liverpool building sites, did raise SIA compliance there. Andy Drane assured the seminar: "A lot of our operations are in what you might call the shady areas." He was not saying he was satisfied with 90pc, and thought the authority could get closer to 100pc: "We are only two years in [that is, into licensing of the contract guarding sector]; give us a chance."
