Raising the bar beyond BS 7858

The make-up of the contract manned security industry is fraught with danger. Individuals are taken on after a three-day basic induction training course and, having only been subjected to a five-year telephone screening check, those individuals are then transported to a client’s premises to protect (all-too-often single-handedly) billions of pounds’ worth of assets.

In reality, the contractor – and certainly the client – barely knows these people at all, and yet will be fully-prepared to entrust them with huge responsibilities. Is the industry being totally irresponsible here?

The industry feels that it’s protecting itself by complying with British Standard 7858 (which, as most of you will know, refers to the security screening of personnel employed in a security environment). BS 7858 incorporates the requirement for the aforementioned five-year telephone check, prior to the individual commencing work, and a ten-year comprehensive written check to be completed within 16 weeks of the commencement of provisional employment. Failure to comply with any aspect of the British Standard should mean that the provisional employment of an individual is terminated.

The contract manned security sector continues to suffer from embarrassing levels of staff turnover. Little wonder, you might say, given the Victorian-era Terms and Conditions of Employment offered to members of staff. A standard 56-hour week – many officers work far longer hours than that, of course – in tandem with low wage rates and an absence of any employee benefits ensures that work in the sector is often a last resort. Little more than an alternative to the dole queue.

Every one of them a ‘time bomb’

At The Security Watchdog, we’ve always been concerned about the practice of inspectorates awarding a certificate of BS 7858 compliance to a company based on a minimum, random sampling of files. Every individual in the manned security industry is a virtual ‘time bomb’, while every client should currently insist that those working on their assignment have been independently checked against the BS 7858 criteria. Nobody can afford to take such risks lightly.

The reality of the situation is that, while BS 7858 is better than nothing, it’s still demonstrably weak. For too long the industry has ring-fenced itself with a second rate system. How many individuals in a given guarding company start work before the five-year telephone vetting process is completed? How many files remain incomplete well after the sixteen-week window is closed, and yet the individual is still being employed?

How many files never see the light of day when the inspectorates come to call (because the contractor concerned knows that, if they do surface, it will mean another inspection and yet more associated cost)?

How many times have contractors been embarrassed by the files of staff members transferred across on TUPE from a company itself inspected against BS 7858 but yet obviously failing to meet the requirements of the standard? How many times does a director irresponsibly sign off on a file knowing that he or she could be taking a considerable risk?

Moreover, the surge in the number of non-UK nationals entering the security industry (set against a background of decreasing indigenous unemployment figures) has resulted in the employment of a high percentage of security officers with extensive working histories from abroad. This factor brings its own problems in obtaining a month-by-month, ten-year background check – from the obvious language barriers to restrictions caused by country-specific Data Protection regulations.

In the very worse case scenarios, there’ll be a zero response to requests for any references forwarded to the country of origin due to civil war or some other kind of political unrest.

An alternative to BS 7858

Contractors mustn’t make the mistake of underestimating the penalties for ‘getting it wrong’. Smaller security companies could well go out of business on the basis of their insurer rejecting a claim because an individual employee had committed a criminal offence and hadn’t been properly screened against BS 7858. At the very least, the services of larger security contractors are likely to be automatically terminated on the specific contract where the offence took place.

Why do the insurers take such risks with what is clearly a flawed system? Is it simply because there’s no alternative? In days gone by the manned security companies have relied almost entirely on being saved by their insurers when a ‘nasty’ has occurred. That’s most unlikely to happen in the future, as the pot of goodwill has almost certainly evaporated.

At The Security Watchdog, our recent experiences of corporate screening – involving companies outside of the traditional security industry, and not hidebound to BS 7858 – has confirmed our view that it’s high time to say “Goodbye” to an unworkable standard and, instead, impose one that can offer genuine comfort and peace of mind to clients, insurers and suppliers of manned security services.

We believe that a system based on a criminal record check, a credit check and references from the last two employers (or any over the last three years… whichever is the most) will give everyone involved a source of genuine comfort. Why was BS 7858 implemented in the first place? Surely it was to detect any criminality in an individual’s background that would prevent him or her from taking up a role in a contract guarding company?

Unfortunately, until now there has been no body operating in and around the private security industry willing to tackle the issue head on. Hopefully, the SIA will change the status quo. Whichever way you care to view the current state of affairs, it’s high time we raised the bar beyond BS 7858.