SIA chief executive Mike Wilson spoke after chairman Baroness Ruth Henig, to speak in more detail about the authority’s work.
Mike Wilson drew an unintentional laugh from the audience with a Freudian slip when, speaking about the recent delays in deciding on licence applications, he said that most new applications are completed ‘within six months’; he meant six weeks. Call centre performance is still not good, he admitted; it averages 15 or 20 minutes to get through to an operator: "I know that because I personally make a call and I don’t put the phone down until I get through to an operator." He added that it usually takes two calls to get through to the queue. "I am afraid the call centre situation is going to continue for a while … performance recovery is my top priority." He acknowledged that licensing of non-front-line directors was a ‘major irritant’, and spoke of the in-house guarding licence question needing to be ‘bottomed out once and for all’. He admitted: "As Blackadder might say, ‘opinions are divided’." And as for compulsory registration of companies, as suggested in a recent review of the approved contractor scheme (ACS), Mike Wilson agreed that it too was contentious, arguing that such registration would make it easier for the SIA to understand the shape and size of the industry, and make it easier to communicate with the industry, and model it more accurately. As for the ACS, he spoke of making the scheme good for business, something that differentiates approved firms (from the rest). On the bugbear that public bodies will not give a lead by only giving contracts to ACS firms, Mike Wilson spoke of discussing with government bodies such as the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office, so that they understand ACS. The SIA, Mike Wilson said, is already negotiating with insurers and end users. He ended with a word about his personal style, ‘open and approachable’: "I know there are issues out there, but I do look forward to us working with you, to sharing issues with you and to making profess in the year ahead."
I am a regulator, Mike Wilson said at the start of his speech. As he added, it is a phrase guaranteed to kill any conversation dead. He’s been in regulation for 12 years, before the SIA at the Defence Vetting Agency and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA). Asked to give a talk by his local [North Yorkshire] Round Table, the organiser suggested Mike Wilson title his talk ‘Regulating the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. That introduction aside, Mike Wilson said the SIA had achieved a lot in its short history: national licensing from scratch. The regulator has issued more than 250,000 licences; set up the approved contractor scheme (ACS); and completed a wide range of compliance and enforcement actions. And as a last resort, prosecuting individuals. While chief exec at the GLA, he was aware of some of the SIA’s difficulties, ‘particularly roll out of guard licences’. "I am afraid it is a fact of life that people remember cock-ups rather than triumphs, but do not let 2005 skew your perception; the SIA has achieved a great deal in getting itself up and running. Thanks to the work of my predecessors, I feel I have a very firm foundation."
The authority has been set up to deliver outcomes; to reduce criminality in the security industry. Through the licensing process alone, not only is there reduced criminality at licence holder level, there is a minimum competence to operate. Licensing alone does not change attitudes. Compliance and enforcement are important, but inevitably take longer: "It is still relatively early days." Mike Wilson spoke of ‘increasing signs intended outcomes are being achieved’: "I am entirely confident that the SIA is heading in the right direction." He spoke of similarities with the GLA; both highly competitive markets, tight margins, a historical reputation for criminal associations and sharp or illegal practices. He added that the overwhelming bulk of the security industry is decent, ‘trying to earn an honest bob in a tough market’. Many problems come from a criminal minority – the grey economy, businesses running out of a white van, paying cash. "And I know we have your support in driving these criminal elements out of the industry. The trick for us is to concentrate our limited resources – we are only about 120-strong – on the rogue element, leaving the lightest possible touch on others. This is far easier said than done, but I think we have a good compliance and enforcement strategy and effective engagement with police and local authority partners." He invited people to contact him directly with any complaint.
He went on to the authority’s recent performance. Pretty well from the outset, it was decided the SIA would contract out document handling as a managed service, including the sending out of application packs, receiving and processing of applications, although decisions on applications are retained in-house by the SIA. "Leaving aside the wisdom of that approach," Mike Wilson said, the managed service provider (MSP) was in Bournemouth and Newcastle. The MSP worked reasonably well; ‘it wasn’t desperately efficient, and wasn’t particularly user-friendly’. Hence, the SIA thought of a MSP2. This mark two was developed ‘very much n response to and collaboration with the security industry’. New would be online applications; and a business would be able to manage its ‘flock’ of applicants. This required a ‘far more complicated IT solution’ than the original MSP, and ‘more complicated than the supplier and perhaps ourselves realised’. It was planned to introduce MSP2 in September 2007. "For reasons still not altogether clear, and not really relevant to this presentation, we went live with a system that wasn’t really ready and the rest as they say is history. And looking back was predictable." Applications scanned into the system got mangled. Some applications already in the system got lost or ‘stuck’. There was no tracker for people to see how the ‘stuck’ applications were doing. "We quickly found ourselves in a vicious circle." Delays led to more phone calls, emails and faxes to the contract centre, ‘which became hopelessly overloaded’. This ‘all happened around November and December last year’. "Our recovery strategy was fairly straightforward; fix the problem, get MSP2 sorted out. Then tackle backlog, free stuck applications and additional staff." As he said, the most irritating aspect was just the inability of applicants to contact anybody, to find out what was happening. While the call centre could increase staff, the real way forward was to fix the underlying problems.
He added that for some time the SIA has had a working end to end system; but it had taken far longer than anyone would have wished. The only major thing now missing is the online application facility, which will not be introduced ‘until absolutely sure it will work and will not bring the system down’. Roughly 36000 applications were in a system that was designed to hold 20000 at a time. "But we are now bringing the number of cases down and in the last few months we have got significantly more cases out of the door than coming in." It will though take weeks or months to get the number down to that 20000. The SIA has now cleared the backlog of emails, but additional staff at Liverpool and London to get through the ‘bulge’ of applications have taken longer than hoped. It has been difficult to free some long-standing applications, caught in the system.
Compliance levels are very high, he added, still over 90 per cent: "And very few of the unlicensed people have been unlicensed because of the SIA inability to provide a licence." That is, those without a licence, who ought to be with one, have not applied.
