Skills for Security National Conference 2008: Licensing – the road ahead

07 Nov 08

I’m very grateful to be given the opportunity to share with you my thoughts about the private security industry, about the impact of licensing thus far and about the road ahead. At the moment, you may be aware that the SIA motor has had a good overhaul, and has checked its engine and tyres, but that it’s now leaving the pit lane and will very shortly be racing back down the track with renewed vigour and purpose!

What I want to talk about are some of the developments we are actively considering such as licence integration and the development of competencies and training, and the challenges which lie ahead for us in the form of new areas of activity for licensing, and the approach to the Olympic games.

The SIA: a success story to date?

To begin, I want to pose the question: ‘How much of a success story has licensing of the private security industry been thus far’? The main objectives of the legislation and of regulation, as I’m sure you are all aware, were to provide the public with greater protection from criminal activity in the industry, and to raise standards across the board. In the last four years, over a quarter of a million licences have been issued. Regulation now covers England, Wales and Scotland, with Northern Ireland scheduled to come on stream at the end of next year.

While there are still issues with pockets of alleged criminal activity in parts of the UK, we know that thousands of people with criminal records have been refused licences, and that many thousands more have prudently decided not even to put in an application.

Without wanting to sound complacent, I believe the public has benefited from licensing, and I am encouraged that compliance levels with regulation are so high – over 90%. Let me stress that means 90% plus. For relatively new legislation, that is a huge success.

I know there is more we can and need to do, working with the police, local authorities and other enforcement partners, and I believe a good start has been made. I also know that one area we need to improve on is to give as much feedback as possible to those who provide us with invaluable intelligence. Incidentally, to read more about our compliance actions or the amount of intelligence we have received and how we use it, why not visit the Enforcement pages on our website at www.the-sia.org.uk – I know you’ll find them informative.

In terms of SIA training qualifications, we are on course to reach half a million before too long. What particularly pleases me is that there are so many people, young and older, now working in the industry for whom their security qualification is the first real accreditation they have attained. The competencies and training required for most sectors are at a reasonably fundamental level at the moment, particularly compared to some other European countries, but an important start has been made which we can and will build on. So there has been an impact, particularly noticeable in specific areas of the industry such as door supervision.

Making The Change

At this point, I’d like to say that I am taking a keen interest in the progress of the ‘Make The Change’ Campaign led by SMT and Infologue.com’s Editors Brian Sims and Bobby Logue. I am also well aware of the continuing concerns about employees, particularly in the security guarding sector, working unacceptably long hours with little in the way of company support mechanisms.

Poor working conditions in the industry are not conducive to promoting a sense of reassurance, or helping to deliver our mission of enhancing public protection. At the same time, as the Regulator we always have to be mindful of our particular remit, as established by the legislation, and also of the need in anything we do to be proportionate and not to place too great a burden on industry in relation to specific requirements we may impose.

We are totally committed to working with all our partners and with the industry to raise standards and conditions, and this is the debate that we are currently having with all our Stakeholders to see how we can do this in a realistic and proportionate way, either through our own Approved Contractor Scheme or other routes.

Perhaps I should add at this point that I am painfully aware the progress of licensing under the SIA has not always been a smooth process. Delivery of our new licensing processing system has at times left something to be desired. The SIA Board, senior managers and staff recognise that the problems which plagued the roll-out of our new licensing system were troublesome for applicants and companies alike. The only mitigation I can offer is that we have not only managed to get our performance back on track within a few months, but also to improve it quite significantly in recent weeks – and to provide you with new and better facilities.

Our new system now provides a host of key management tools to assist companies such as the bulk licence and application trackers, and online reconciliation, and many companies are now trialling online applications.

Maintaining an improved performance

It’s important for us to provide and maintain performance improvement, because you will be aware that there are new sectors scheduled for licensing quite soon such as private investigators and bailiffs, and we also face a large number of license renewals in the next few months.

I fear those of you who work in the industry might not be as patient with us again if we were to hit further technical snags. To guard against this, I and the Board recently commissioned a capability review of the organisation, which has just been completed. We are confident that the action plan which is being implemented as a result of the review will have the effect of maintaining and improving our performance and standards of customer service.

However, it is not only those who apply for licences or the companies they work for who are our customers. The public are also our customers – very important customers – and here I feel very strongly that we have not thus far kept them very well informed about the benefits that licensing has delivered, or about what we are doing and planning to do on their behalf. This is not just my view. I know you agree with this, as you have told us as much. In the months to come, we need to find better ways to communicate with the public more effectively, to find out what their experiences are of private security companies and employees, and to what extent they are feeling more reassured as a result of licensing.

Lack of detailed data

One of the problems we have faced as a new Regulator over the past five years is the relative lack of detailed information in the public domain about the private security industry. It is an incredibly diverse sector, and while the SIA has been able bit by bit to accumulate data about the shape and size of the industry, the fact that we operate by licensing individuals rather than companies has made it far from easy to ensure that regulation drives improved standards of company behaviour and activity, particularly in some sectors (for example vehicle immobilisation).

Earlier this year, we organised and facilitated the first network meeting for vehicle immobilisation companies, and strong support was expressed by those present for the implementation of a compulsory scheme to register companies – similar to the requirement that accompanied the introduction of licensing in the Irish Republic.

In a range of consultative meetings during the year, it has become clear that many people in the industry support the concept of company registration across all sectors, and we are now pursuing the feasibility of this with the Government. We share the view of industry colleagues that there would be many benefits from such a scheme, including provision for a directory of registered companies for customers on our web site, giving us accurate rather than anecdotal data, but most importantly ensuring that companies posing a risk to public safety are removed, by ensuring that only properly regulated and registered companies are able to operate in the private security industry.

Such a list would complement our much used online register of Approved Contractors. The more information we have on the range and activities of the companies operating in the private security industry, the more effective regulation will be.

Licence integration and competency development

Let me turn now to the issues of licence integration and competency development. Our aim as a Regulator is to make the licensing regime as effective and proportionate as possible. With this as our goal, work has begun to address the issue of licence integration.

Though licensing works on a sector-specific basis, we are well aware that members of the security industry often work across a number of different sectors. The current regulation accommodates this cross-sector working by enabling individuals to hold different licences simultaneously. However, integration between the sectors is limited and inflexible in practice, and many people find the current arrangements unwieldy and quite expensive.

A good example of this is that, currently, close protection operatives, in addition to carrying out their own activities, can also carry out the licensable activity of a door supervisor and the licensable activity of a security officer. A door supervisor can carry out the activities of a security officer but not those of close protection. And a security officer cannot undertake the role of a door supervisor or of a bodyguard.

This lack of flexibility is not really compatible with the way many members of the security industry actually work. It also undermines the aspiration of treating different sectors as alternative gateways to the wider private security industry. We are committed to the development of all sectors and qualifications within a framework that helps the individual to develop, maximises market flexibility and helps to raise standards across the board. The opportunity exists to look at things afresh in time for the forthcoming round of door supervisor license renewals in 2010.

Within the current licensing framework, the one distinguishing feature between the different sectors is the competency requirement. If there were no differences in sector competencies, there would be only one type of licence. Thus the competency framework is in effect the enabler or disabler of licence integration.

As you know, the SIA sets the competency criteria for each sector, and we endorse awarding bodies to develop the qualifications and approve the training centres. Under the current system, training courses are developed sector by sector and in most cases, to gain accreditation for another sector, the licence holder has to complete the full course. They are required to do this even where there is an element of overlap with training that they may already have successfully completed. We know that this unintended consequence is at odds with practical reality, and is also a deterrent to competency development.

We believe that workforce competency is an absolutely critical part of the public protection that regulation should be providing. For example, we know that CCTV training significantly improves the value of surveillance material as evidence, while also helping to reduce abuse and poor practice. This belief in the importance of competency means we do not intend to water down training requirements simply to facilitate license integration. Instead, we want an approach to licensing which results in more flexible integration, but also in high standards.

Our belief is that a modular rather than sector basis to training and qualification will help to achieve this. We are fortunate in our timing in that current developments in the learning and skills arena are progressing towards modular qualifications and accreditation. We are also fortunate in that we can redesign our own processes and procedures to complement the new approach when we feel it is necessary.

Moving towards a generic SIA licence

Under our proposal, the licence itself would be generic, and though it would not contain information about the holder’s licensed activities, it would continue to offer the public a good level of reassurance, as it does now. Our online public register is now the definitive check on an individual’s licensable status, and that would continue to be the ultimate check. Using the register as the definitive guide to licence information is a tried and tested arrangement, and the new proposal is to use it to reduce the current over-dependency on the presence of a licence card, which we know may be forged, stolen, expired or revoked.

The competency requirements for licensed activities are currently being redeveloped, and the SIA’s own criteria updated accordingly.

Training modules linked to units of accreditation are being developed and individuals would, under this model of licence, use these to accumulate a portfolio of training and qualifications. This framework will effectively allow an individual to develop their own path to building sector competence without having to train in areas of existing competence and without having to apply for additional licences.

By happy coincidence, both the modular approach to competency accreditation and the likely changes to the way we process and issue licences could be in place by the end of the 2010-2011 financial year, subject to consultation. This in turn will be in good time for the UK-wide security requirements arising from the London Olympics in 2012.

Under our proposal, the categories of licensable activity would remain the same, but we are considering adding an entry-level category covering limited activities such as bag search and entry search. We feel that this change will help to build sufficient capacity within the security industry for the Games themselves, and for the huge number of associated events across the country. We also feel, as with so much else connected with the Olympics, that the new categories will provide a legacy of operatives with basic training who could then choose to top up their competencies to meet other security sector requirements in the years after 2012.

There is also the issue of how we could use this framework to support and facilitate Continuing Professional Development, to which this proposal would contribute. For example, we could build our modular competency requirement to dovetail with other qualifications that will allow licence holders to have a head start in achieving qualifications that will help them to further develop their career.

In terms of simplification, we expect the new arrangements will be much less onerous on our licence holders collectively, and this is one of the main drivers behind the proposed changes. We also believe the proposal will bring down the cost of training and assessment, as well as removing the need for multiple licences and extra charges associated with that.

Competency in relation to renewal

Something else I just want to touch on is another key element of our ongoing developmental work, looking at competency requirements for licence renewals. The project is looking to refresh the current licence-linked qualifications to make sure they are relevant to the jobs people are actually doing. We are currently consulting on potential rules about how existing license holders prove that they continue to be competent when they come to renew their licences.

The first aspect of this project is the redevelopment of the licence-linked qualifications. The current regime of licence-linked qualifications and training were introduced to support the licensing process nearly five years ago now. However, industry practice and the legislation that affects the way we work is changing and, in some areas (such as with the use of CCTV), technology has driven changes to the way in which the industry currently operates. We need to make sure that licence-linked training and qualifications reflect these changes, and also to ensure that the right skills are still being delivered.

Above all, we need to make sure that licence-linked training and qualifications are seen as adding real value to the individual and to the employer and are not just seen as a box to be ticked on the way to getting a licence.

At this point, I want to emphasise very strongly – and not just because this is a conference held under the auspices of Skills for Security – that as the Regulator, we at the SIA are totally supportive of all the work carried out by Skills on behalf of the industry. Skills for Security is playing a central and invaluable role in developing and upholding the national occupational standards, which we use to draw up our specifications for the competencies for licensing.

Furthermore, I am well aware how hard David Greer and his colleagues are working to ensure that the security industry as a sector is not squeezed out, but is properly represented nationally, at Sector Skills Council level... and we support them fully in their efforts. I see one of the major roles of Skills for Security as being to develop career paths for individuals to enable them to progress effectively, and we at the SIA want to do whatever we can to assist in this process.

I believe that we need a formal mechanism through which we can all work together to raise skills across the board in the private security sector. If there is any possibility of Skills for Security facilitating this process, we would be delighted to take part and to do everything we can to contribute.

Can I just remind you that at the moment, all the proposals I just outlined to you are out for consultation, and I urge you to join in this process and give us your input on what you think future qualifications should look like. You can do this by going to the training pages on our web site, or feeding in to the recently-established SIA Expert Groups or using the Skills for Security Sector Groups. We want to make sure that our proposals for the next generation of our core competency requirements are right. We do need your views.

We have worked with industry experts to draft our updated specifications, and the more input the industry has into them, the more meaningful the training will be. What we all want to see is a better qualified work force in the industry, and a strong move to support CPD at all levels. We need to use every opportunity to encourage people to upskill and to build on their existing competencies. A modular approach will contribute to this process.

Engagement with the wider industry

I hope you will have noticed that in the past year, we have tried extremely hard to engage with all sections of the industry in order to facilitate the establishment of networks in sectors which we felt could benefit, to listen to the views of the industry and to facilitate a productive dialogue.

One of the important developments from our point of view in the past few months has been the appointment of a Board member with detailed knowledge of the industry who can now help us to move forward in tune with the industry – and in partnership with Skills for Security as well as other training and awarding bodies.

We know that as the industry Regulator we have important work to do, but we cannot deliver the outcomes we all want to see without the help, feedback and advice of our partners. We know that Skills for Security are engaging in work and in discussions which will support our efforts, and we very much hope that the industry will use the licensing regime and the core competencies as a foundation on which to build specialisms and extra skills where they are needed, and to encourage a structure of CPD in their workplaces.

A mission for the Regulator

Our mission will be to continue to work with all our partners to do what we can to drive up standards in the industry, to enable recruits coming into the sector to gain a range of skills and to improve the levels of service which the industry offers to the public.

I believe that despite the current difficult economic climate there are great opportunities for private security companies to diversify their activities in the next few years, and we want to play our part by providing regulation which is supportive and relatively light touch, but which targets and cracks down hard on those who try to evade the law – while also helping to make private security a sector which young people are attracted to move into.

The hope that continues to inspire me as chair of the SIA is that in the years to come we will all succeed in turning these aspirations into reality.

*Baroness Ruth Henig is chairman of the Security Industry Authority

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