The industry needs a Forum for debate!

I note Bob states that while he’s uncertain as to how his customers will benefit from Sector Security Services becoming part of that family, his officers “seem to get along with the local police quite adequately in any case”. This seems to be something of a contradiction, as Bob’s company already appears to be playing a part in the wider police family!

Lest it be forgotten, there are – very encouragingly – many security companies who seem to understand the concept and already make a significant contribution to the wider police family, Reliance Security Services working alongside Lancashire Police and Noble Security Service’s project in conjunction with the British Transport Police (‘Parallel lines’, SMT, August 2003, pp18-24) being perfect cases in point.

Bob also asks what, as a security contractor, he and his company might contribute to the Home Office’s policing agenda. If one accepts that there is indeed a political agenda for involving the industry in the wider police family, and that Bob doesn’t want “civil service and police pensioners” to tell him what to do, could the industry not help him by setting out what it sees as the contribution it could reasonably make in this area?

That would certainly allow those from within the industry who know it best to contribute to the debate rather than, as Bob suggests, potentially having their own business aims completely overlooked.

At the present time, the more general problem is that while those from within the industry attack practitioners from outside its boundaries for making suggestions about it (or even trying to work inside it!), when it comes to the private security industry actually laying down a credible strategic direction for anything that’s not directly commercial there’s no Forum in which a constructive debate might take place.

The British Security Industry Association (BSIA) does an excellent job in terms of representing its members’ interests. Its relationship with the Security Industry Authority (SIA) proves that, but it may not always be best equipped to take a non-commercial view. The BSIA may find competing interest groups within the organisation render an industry-wide approach an impossible juggling act. And that in spite of the exceptional conciliatory skills of its chief executive David Dickinson.

For its part, the SIA couldn’t act as the Forum for debate as while it exists to help transform the industry, it’s the industry regulator and cannot – indeed should not – be its ‘think tank’.

At what is a time of great change for the industry, should it not now come together in a fully-representative, credible and non-commercially focused Forum? This would allow the main practitioners to do some serious thinking, stimulate a debate, make a contribution and open up a dialogue with outsiders, thereby seizing the initiative on a range of hugely important issues. Being fully representative, credible and non-commercial in its focus would be critical for the Forum, if a little challenging.

Adopting such a philanthropic stance might just lever in some new Government funding to support the Forum if it proved the industry was open and innovative in the context of the wider community and Government/SIA policy. For starters, two central issues might be the industry’s approach to the wider police family and what the industry as a whole can offer the public in terms of the changing nature of police provision.

If this were to happen, the industry might feel more receptive and better equipped to respond to issues which affect it, even if they are raised by outsiders – whether regulator, politician or pensioner. That may go some way towards satisfying the very real concerns articulated by Bob Long and give the security industry a new, dynamic and wide-ranging perspective on a range of contemporary issues.

A security industry that, in philosophical terms, is indeed ready for the New World.