From April 2015, if your business provides licensable individuals to supply security industry services, you need a business licence from the Security Industry Authority (SIA); and it’ll be an offence not to have one.
A 50-page SIA document tells you whether you need a business licence, how and when to apply, the associated fees, the conditions of your business licence and what enforcement action the regulator will take if you operate without a business licence.
Some details the SIA has given – such as that you will have to pay an annual subscription fee to retain your business licence, besides the application fee, depending on size of firm (’head count’). But we don’t know yet what the sub and application fees will be. One way to show you’re a competent business is to have certification, as accredited for instance by British Standards, SSAIB or NSI. But the SIA awaits the accreditation body UKAS to confirm the list of accredited conformity assessment bodies; the SIA expects that to come in January. Details on the SIA website.
You, the security business, will have to show you are fit and proper’ to supply security industry services. In other words, this is regulation beyond the badges for guards and CCTV operators and doormen; and the voluntary approved contractor scheme (ACS). One of many questions about the ‘new regime’ from mainly door and guarding firms: what about the ACS, given all the time and money over several years that approved firms have put into it? According to the SIA, such investment will be protected. “Businesses already approved under the ACS will still need to apply for a business licence; the ACS will represent a voluntary additional approval for businesses wishing to demonstrate higher compliance and quality.”
Your business can apply for a business licence (to last five years) from April 2014; doubtless due to the institutional memory of the log-jam when licences came in, in England and Wales, around spring 2005, the SIA is seeking to avoid another last minute rush of applications. The regulator says that it will be dealing with about ‘3,000 to 4,000 applications’ (the wide range itself a sign of uncertainty as to how many firms are out there). To ensure your application is processed and your business licence is granted to you by the April 6, 2015, deadline, the SIA ‘strongly recommends’ that you lodge your application by October 1, 2014. “The SIA cannot guarantee that it can complete the processing of applications received after this date in time for 6 April 2015.”
Among the factors whether a business will get a licence or not is ‘integrity’, a word which as the advice document sets out covers not only facts such as SIA ‘compliance actions’ against a firm or going insolvent, but matters of opinion such as ‘any significant complaints against the business’. To gain a licence you – the company and its ‘controlling minds’ – also have to show ‘financial probity’ and pass criminal record checks ‘in relation to all controlling minds’, even if you have gone through such checks for your individual SIA badge. The SIA stress that ‘applying for a business licence is the last step in the business licence process’.
Then what? It does not end there as a business will have to supply a ‘yearly return’ (electronically, through the SIA website) ‘evidencing their continued compliance with the business licensing regime’.
As for who needs a business licence, you cannot get out of it by claiming contract or door security is only part of your service, for instance if you do event management and provide door security. But you do not need a business licence if your security staff are volunteers; again, at events for example.
As for enforcement, what if the April 2015 deadline comes and you are still awaiting your licence? The SIA says that it aims to be consistent; in other words, the SIA is reserving its position, and it will depend how much effort you’ve made. The SIA has long spoken of how it seeks to give verbal and written warnings, as it looks to avoid costly formal proceedings (’prosecution is not our preferred option’). There will be a public register; businesses that have had their business licence withdrawn or suspended will have this noted.
For the document visit the SIA website.
