The British Security Industry Association recently joined forces with the Security Industry Authority to run a series of regional seminars for end users aimed at raising awareness of industry regulation and its likely impacts. First Bobby Logue and then Ian Drury provide in-depth reports from the Heathrow and Coventry events, which generated several key issues worthy of further debate.
"There will be a finite pool of quality, licensed labour and an infinite amount of work… The wiser contractors will already be drawing up league tables of clients, and looking after the good ones… Bad clients will have no-one to turn to… Anecdotal evidence suggests that buyers of the security service focus on price. Is that a slick approach to commodity procurement?

"Is the service bought, for instance, on the basis of 'six people, 24 hours per day' or 'We have a building and people and property within that building which we need to protect, so what's the best way to go about doing that'?"

A determined John Saunders – chief executive of the Security Industry Authority (SIA) – asked these very questions of the audience who attended an educational seminar on regulation and licensing organised by the British Security Industry Association and the SIA and aimed squarely at end users.

The seminar, one of a series that ran throughout last October and November, took place at the Renaissance Hotel, Heathrow Airport as part of the SIA's defined 'stakeholder awareness' campaign which previously witnessed a series of excellent regional Roadshows up and down the country ('SIA engages buyers at first regulation Roadshow', News Special, SMT, March 2003, pp15-16).

This time around, the seminar presenters also included Professor Martin Gill – director of Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International, and the man tasked with conducting impact studies on the future of regulation in the private sector – and Richard Childs, immediate former chief constable of Lincolnshire Police and now director of The Community Safety Consultancy.

Effective and fair regulation
Effective and fair regulation is what the industry really needs, but will the purchasers out there really buy into that idea?

John Saunders made his views plain at the Heathrow seminar, held on 27 October.

"Let me express the views of a major buyer of security services," said Saunders. "He told me: 'The public and business community hold a mainly negative view of private security. Officers are ridiculously underpaid and inadequately trained, and screening is a joke. But what can you really expect when the security industry is often forced to provide cheap solutions, and cannot pay enough to recruit and maintain quality people? We're all facing an increased threat from crime, violence, theft and even terrorism. Our duty of care to our employees, customers, shareholders and communities has never been more vivid. That being the case, we should all be embarrassed and ashamed of the industry the way things stand'."

Saunders pointed out that the British security industry turns over something in the region of £3 billion per annum in revenue terms. It employs around 500,000 security personnel ("which can be measured against just 136,000 police officers") and 'boasts' a staff turnover of anything up to 150%. In some sectors, up to 25% of all operatives earn the National Minimum Wage. Saunders is adamant that the industry competes on price not quality, whereby "margins are under sustainable pressure and quality is driven out of the product".

In stark terms, if you’re a security buyer then you’ll increasingly be faced with the challenge of having to work in a way which no longer involves the automatic receipt of what can loosely be described as the traditional police service

Now, though, the world is – at long last – beginning to change. The majority of the security industry and its stakeholders have consistently called for support in introducing higher standards. Since the Spring of last year, the SIA has been working to convert the Private Security Industry Act 2001 into reality.

According to John Saunders, the Authority has four major aims, namely to:

  • increase the degree of public trust and confidence in the private security industry by setting and maintaining standards of probity, and improving the professionalism of all those who work within the industry;
  • encourage businesses within the industry to improve their standards by creating a framework for developing, promoting and spreading Best Practice advice and solutions;
  • create a security industry 'Centre of Knowledge' and expertise which enables and encourages effective industry development and investment;
  • strengthen the extended police family by encouraging and supporting further engagement of the private security industry.

Saunders added: "In pursuing these aims, we will continue to work collaboratively and in partnership with the industry, its customers, the police and the public. What we will not do is amateurishly bumble along and slap a bit of licensing on top of what already exists as cheaply as possible and then get out of the way. That is not the strategic direction of the SIA and, more importantly, it's not what the security community either wants or needs."

Policing: a different structure
Richard Childs provided an honest picture of how policing in the future may focus more on community-based issues and less on the needs of business. Childs also spoke on the possibility of a greater reliance from business on the wider police family (which, of course, includes input from private sector security companies). What exactly is that extended police family, though?

"In essence," stressed Childs, "it's really talking about increasing numbers in the ranks of those who can impact on crime, disorder, social disharmony and serious criminality, and widening the net in terms of where individuals are sourced to do so. The strap line might read 'All Hands to the Pump', if you like," continued Childs. "It's not a Government model that's specifically about everybody becoming a police officer or organisations being turned into mini police forces, although in some of the more extreme models that may well be the case."

According to Childs, it's more about "increasing the numbers of people and organisations who could share the same or at least similar visions concerning society and how it should behave, and work in collaboration and partnership with the traditional organs of the state to present a united front with the aim of enhancing social well-being."

Childs feels there is "considerable political muscle" behind the concept of the extended police family. "Already, the plans have been afforded real teeth through a variety of legislative documents and the direction from which the SIA has come," commented Childs. "It's for these reasons that an understanding of each issue surrounding the extended police family must form part of the debate about what regulation means to security provider and buyer alike."

Like it or not – and not everybody does – there's a changing policing environment on the agenda. "To be brutally frank," reasoned Childs, "if you're a security buyer then you'll increasingly be faced with the challenge of having to work in a way which no longer involves the automatic receipt of what can loosely be described as the traditional police service."

Buyer-supplier relationships have to change

Of course, many clients will say that effective police support – whether by way of a quick turn-out to confront a non-violent retail criminal, investigate staff fraud or respond to a burglar alarm – has been missing for a long time now.

Richard Childs himself accepts that the major focus of the UK's policing effort has been on the domestic as opposed to the commercial arena. As such, this view holds some validity. "To be fair to the police, though," added Childs, "a non-commercial focus – nay imperative – has been made much keener by a range of performance targets which only reward effort and success in the community arena."

Did the buyers buy it?
End users at the Heathrow seminar were upbeat, their concerns for the most part focused on ensuring that the various procedures and processes being put in place by the SIA will deliver the desired results. Judging from the mood of the end users that manned guarding web site Infologue.com and SMT spoke to, there appeared to be a real willingness to make regulation work.

Thom Williamson – UK security operations manager at IBM – found the seminar to be "very informative", as did Martyn Webster (office services manager at Carlton Television). That said, Webster sounded a note of caution.

"While the issues surrounding door supervisors and wheel clampers appear to be fully developed," he told SMT, "I began to feel progressively less confident about the maturity of the thinking surrounding some of the proposals for manned security, and the extension of regulation and licensing to cover in-house personnel. At the end of the day, I was left with the impression that the SIA seems to be making some of it up as it goes along."

Concerns raised by the wider audience were also of interest. The Government doesn't have the best of records when it comes to outsourcing functions – the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) arguably serving as a good case in point – and for the industry to rely upon agencies such as this to deliver mandatory checks doesn't bode well for recruitment. There are around 500,000 people in the industry, and the CRB expects to be able to turn around an application within two weeks. It will be interesting to see whether or not the CRB can sustain this stated turnaround time given the sheer volume of applications regulation is likely to generate.

The CRB's task will be made all the more difficult by the implications of the likely failure rate. At present, John Saunders and his colleagues at the SIA estimate that 30% of licence applicants are expected to be refused.