SIR – It would be churlish not to congratulate Peter Hermitage on his full-time appointment as chairman of the Security Industry Authority (SIA) (‘Hermitage appointed full-time SIA supremo’, News Update, SMT, August 2004, p9).

I can think of no-one more qualified than a retired chief police officer to lead assorted civil service and police pensioners in supervising an energetic, competitive commercial security sector.

Home Secretary David Blunkett is looking forward to Peter’s tenure, during which he’ll be “establishing the SIA as an effective, modern regulator” while “contributing to the wider police family” and “supporting Home Office aims”. All very commendable.

However, I know that the larger parts of my recruiting and deployment costs are already taken up with screening and training. Since April last, for a small donation you can ask me anything you like about a bureaucratic maze of immigration documents! That said, I remain uncertain as to exactly how my customers will benefit from Sector Security Services’ officers being part of the wider police family, in particular because they seem to get along with the local police quite adequately in any case.

How we, as security contractors, are to contribute to Home Office ambitions – whatever they might be – is yet a mystery, and whether or not that family actually fits in with my own business aims seems to have been completely overlooked.

Aside from the cost of a licence – does anyone else among SMT’s readership remember the original proposition of £40 – the deafening silence from the SIA on the practicalities of manned guarding licenses is pretty significant. Simple matters such as ‘What?’, ‘When?’ and ‘How?’ seem a little too hard to face today, don’t they?

Bob Long, Managing Director, Sector Security Services

Source

SMT