SMEs: dilemmas over licensing

After all, external vetting of a security officer by The Security Watchdog costs just £70 per candidate, with the Criminal Record Check run by the local police station coming in at £20.

Of course it should be remembered that the SIA is obligated to fund its budgetary requirements. Furthermore, it remains a relatively new organisation that has faced major initial expenditure. However, it would seem unreasonable if there were any increase on the current scheme without a purposeful consultation involving smaller guarding companies, not to mention a full analysis spanning at least the first three years of the licensing initiative.

Training is another area of concern. Due to the low profit margins in the industry, many companies are finding the cost of additional training to be problematic. This is remarkably apparent within the SME guarding concerns. Subsidies from Government organisations like the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) help a little, but it must be said that those subsidies are few and far between.

For example, the Government’s Profit for Learning scheme that is currently being run by the LSC is a pilot that, until September, was confined to east London. It has been limited to 12 operatives per guarding company, which is woefully inadequate in relation to the requirements of so many SMEs.

Security managers in contract guarding firms also face a problem when it comes to the empowerment of their employees. Thus far they have enjoyed an authoritarian role within their Taylorian, mechanistic operations. Licensing is giving a substantial amount of power back to the individual. No longer is the security officer a transferable, easily replaced ‘widget’. Security officers as semi-skilled professionals will now be a reality. Those same officers will demand higher wages.

There is also a group of people who will become victims of licensing, and yet they have received very little attention. The industry recruits a good many individuals from the ethnic minorities, many of whom are now having to be put through training courses and application procedures with which they cannot comply. Those operatives are often very polite and nothing less than 100% committed to customer service due to their culture, so what is being done to help them?

Will licensing hasten a new economic dawn? Will we see the gradual creation of the empathetic, dynamically-involved and considerate security firm? Or is this really the beginning of an elitist industry in which only the established will survive to continue their authoritarian control on an even grander scale?

Wilson Chowdhry, Managing Director AA Security

The Editor replies:

Thank you for your thought-provoking words, Wilson. Let’s see if interested parties care to respond...