Time for you to act, SIA!

It was at about this time last year that my company, International Security & Surveillance, began in earnest to implement the plans we had made to accommodate Security Industry Authority (SIA) licensing. The workflow connected with licensing our staff and achieving Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS) status quickly accelerated – well beyond, in fact, even my most extreme expectations about what would be required to comply with the new legislation.

During this period I also decided to fully-fund and fully-resource our security officers’ applications. That being the case, as fast as the work piled up so too did the bills!

For my part, I feel that I run a well-managed and profitable medium-sized security guarding services business that operates in London, the Thames Valley and Scotland. I suspect that the size of our business puts us in the ‘Most Pain’ category as far as licensing is concerned. Our security officer roster was too big for the business to be able to handle licensing in a casual manner. Licensing a dozen or so officers would have been easy enough, but by the same token we’re too small to have legions of Human Resources support staff that could absorb the extra work.

Financially, we were well prepared but – and there’s little point in pretending otherwise – we paid the regulation bills with gritted teeth. While I do not envy the sheer scale of cost that the likes of G4S Security Services (UK) must have faced, I suspect that the impact of that cost was more direct for companies like ours. More immediate and more personal.

The spirit of licensing

We – and many more companies like us – have invested heavily in the regulatory process. Licensing is very much a good thing, and I am proud that this company is an Approved Contractor. Our managers have a firm mandate to adhere to the law and spirit of licensing.

Now is the time for the SIA to bare its teeth and show the industry, its operatives, owners, managers and customers that the Regulator means business. The SIA must crack down on illegal security operations – and crack down hard. Bring before the Courts those that ignored the 20 March deadline and those who have blatantly disregarded the legislation.

Every single one of the companies that have earned their Approved Contractor status knows that their hard-won competitive advantage is being undermined by unscrupulous operators who didn’t invest their time and money, and who decided they would not work towards gaining legitimacy.

What I now wish to see is highly visible enforcement of the law. I don’t doubt that the SIA is working hard right across a demanding portfolio of tasks and responsibilities, and I’m certainly not about to make any accusations that the Regulator is under-performing or failing in its responsibilities – I simply don’t have a great deal of evidence to either support or deny such a claim.

However, it would appear to me that for the sake of credibility where licensing and regulation are concerned, the industry must see, hear and read about enforcement on a regular basis. Otherwise, what is the incentive for buyers to fall into line? What’s the incentive for business owners and managers to add their names to the list of 212 Approved Contractors. Otherwise, what was the point of it all?

In-house: what’s being done?

Now is the time for the SIA to bare its teeth and show the industry, its operatives, owners, managers and customers that the Regulator means business. The SIA must crack down on illegal security operations – and crack down hard

While I’m banging the licensing drum, I have another question for the Regulator. What’s the timetable for adding in-house security officers to the licensing process (for which SMT is campaigning alongside Infologue.com in Four Issues, One Voice)? Our latest information is that not only is there no timetable for bringing in-house operatives into line with the licensing process, as things stand there is no firm decision to do so at all.

Can someone please explain to me why in-house security officers are exempt? What duties do they perform and what is the compelling case for them to be exempt?

Like many contractors, we provide relief security officers to so-called in-house teams. Our officers are badged, while their in-house co-workers are not. They do the same work, at the same premises, at the same time and adhere to the same assignment instructions. Why are they disadvantaged in this way?

To my way of thinking, the line between in-house and contracted security guarding is hopelessly blurred. If an officer is employed by a property management company to provide security services in relation to a building’s assets and tenants, he or she will be regarded as in-house. Why the management company isn’t then viewed as being a ‘contractor’ is beyond me. They are paid to provide security. We are paid to provide security.

Where officers are employed directly by the company they are paid to protect. I can see a distinction in their employment status, but I still cannot see the justification for excluding them from the legislation. This can only lead to clients pulling their security back in-house. That process is gravely prejudicial to the contract security industry in general.

The sales team at International Security & Surveillance are finding that a move towards shunning contract security in favour of a return (or move) to in-house provision is rising higher and higher up the corporate purchasing agenda. This is motivated by a desire to avoid the costs and administration of licensing.

Towards a mandatory ACS

Is contract security always better than in-house? That’s the $64,000 question, but the debate should really be about security effectiveness and not about cost. Having in-house security operatives excluded from licensing is artificially skewing the argument, and for all the wrong reasons.

As long as the ACS remains a voluntary scheme, those companies that have invested in the process are disadvantaged whenever they come into competition with a non-ACS service provider. Non-ACS companies enter the tender situation without carrying the extra overhead that the scheme brings and, potentially, emerge from it with a contract staffed by a team of licensed operatives (transferred under TUPE) in whom they have invested nothing.

The onus is on the customer to impose ACS as a quality benchmark, but this relies on their good faith – something which is all-too-often outweighed by commercial opportunism. Follow this line of thinking and you realise that, far from providing a level playing field, a voluntary ACS achieves the exact opposite.