SIA: regulate or run the industry?

Let me begin this discourse by stating that I fully support Security Industry Authority (SIA) chief executive Andy Drane’s approach to the extended police family (or what I now prefer to call the extended security family), and his clear determination to engage the industry in that – as far as it wants to be (‘Corporate responsibilities: a shared vision on crime reduction’, News Update, Security Management Today, May 2005, pp13-14).

What I do not agree with is the ‘aim’ that the SIA should be the ‘Centre of Knowledge’ for the industry. The SIA is the regulator and running a ‘Centre of Knowledge’ is most definitely not the job of the regulator. The only people who can decide what is of value to the industry are professionals from within the industry itself. Hence it should be the industry that ultimately runs any ‘Centre of Excellence’, and not those who reside at the Authority.

Let’s go back to the Private Security Industry Act 2001 and check out where the SIA assumes the power to become a ‘Centre of Knowledge’… Well, I am afraid that it does not. The closest the Act comes to being able to claim that the SIA can do so is when the legislation states that the Authority’s functions shall be: ‘Setting, approving and maintaining standards and do(ing) anything it considers is calculated to facilitate … the carrying out of any of its functions’ (I paraphrase here).

The ’Centre of Knowledge’

The Act does not specifically – nor, I would suggest, even implicitly – empower the regulator to become a ‘Centre of Knowledge’. To suggest that it does is highly inventive and dubious. Indeed, I would philosophically argue that while the SIA is empowered to comment upon (and judge) standards within the industry, it must not forget its primary role: to regulate.

While according to the Act it is acceptable for the SIA to be ‘encourage(ing) effective industry development and investment’, Andy Drane goes way beyond what is intended if it were to become ‘an expert organisation’ in its own right (beyond being expert on what it needs to know in order to regulate).

Before we know it, because the SIA has virtually unlimited licence fee money to play with it would become – de facto – the main or only ‘expert organisation’ and so start to tell the industry exactly what to do even more so than is presently the case. That worries me.

As an aside, in light of the oft-stated desire of ministers to make Government smaller, I would also be interested in knowing what Home Secretary Charles Clarke feels about this latest SIA ambition. Given the state of Home Office funding, I suspect the future for the SIA may be smaller not bigger – unless it chooses, as I hinted, to subsidise its big ambitions with higher and higher fees.

The issue at stake here is one of principle. I believe that if a regulator is to maintain its integrity, independence and objectivity it should operate at arms length from the industry it regulates. Becoming the ‘Centre of Knowledge’ militates against this because the Authority would ultimately be far too involved with day-to-day operations and so be unable to analyse or criticise what was happening with any great degree of credibility. It couldn’t, as it would have a role in – or even ownership of – the new developments.

Remember, however, that the SIA’s ‘aims’ are not what the law says it must do. Aims are what it has decided it what wants to do. While I may offend some parties by saying so, given the absence of a formal consultative mechanism between the SIA and the industry (and that is not the same as a few meetings with the usual suspects in smoke-filled rooms), the wider industry has not actually had the opportunity to formally discuss those ‘aims’ with the regulator for many months.

Clear water must be there

The SIA can encourage the industry to set up a ‘Centre of Knowledge’ as a way of driving up standards, but it must never ever run it. If this happens the next thing the SIA will be demanding is a seat on the Board of any security company which wants be part of the ACS

Not being infallible, the SIA’s ‘aims’ may not actually be right for those who were not present in those smoke-filled rooms. In this particular case, I strongly believe that the ‘aim’of becoming a ‘Centre of Knowledge’ is way off beam, seriously flawed and indeed potentially dangerous for some in the industry. To be candid, it smacks of a desire to ‘run’ rather than regulate the industry.

I have always been very eager to see the industry and the regulator work closely together, and have rated the SIA highly. There comes a point, though, when for the sake of integrity and the ability of the regulator to regulate, there needs to be some clear water between it and the industry. Just at the moment the water seems very muddy indeed and, if achieved, this ‘aim’ will solidify it completely.

The industry and not the regulator must decide its future. A ‘Centre of Knowledge’ would be all about building the future, and this is a matter – initially – for the industry. It cannot allow someone else to do this building for it.

The SIA can encourage the industry to set up a ‘Centre of Knowledge’ as a way of driving up standards, and even help fund it, but it must never ever run it. If this happens the next thing the SIA will be demanding is a seat on the Board of any security company which wants be part of the Approved Contractor Scheme, just to ensure that they are ‘on message’.

This latest SIA idea concerns me even more than it might, as I am increasingly puzzled about who is actually openly checking and challenging some of the things the Authority is doing and saying. While I hear lots of whisperings of discontent about the SIA from both big and small players in the industry, I see no obvious sign that anyone is articulating them coherently, that the wider industry is actually engaged with the SIA in debate about where it is going or that the concerns voiced by some people are actually listened to, let alone taken much account of.

Indeed, concerns I have articulated have been met with the comment from some who have been present in those smoke-filled rooms that “we mustn’t ‘rock the boat’ as things could be made worse”.

A laissez faire approach

History is littered with boats that were not rocked but ended up on the rocks anyway. It may just be that this laissez faire approach says something more about the state of representation within the industry than the quality of the arguments.

I have the highest regard for the SIA, but for it – or any regulator – to work well, there needs to be widespread communication with all sectors and healthy tension between the regulator and the industry it regulates. That means constructive challenge, argument and a willingness to tell it as it is rather than to say what it is thought will maintain a ‘sweetness and light’ scenario. Currently we seem to have (almost) total subservience to the will of the SIA and a Nelson-like ‘blind eye’ approach to whatever dubious idea it comes up with next.

If the industry lets this latest bid for power pass through without registering real and determined objection (based on properly marshalled arguments), it will be another nail in the coffin of the idea that the security sector, rather than the regulator, should actually manage its own future and be the one to set its own strategic agenda. The industry and not the regulator should lead in the creation of a ‘Centre of Knowledge’.