Interviews

Sun setting on licensing for PIs?

by Mark Rowe

In the latest, free to view, summer 2014 quarterly issue of the ABI Journal, the Association of British Investigators (ABI) publication, the association’s president Tony Imossi refers to his letter in the April 2014 issue of Professional Security. He deplores opportunists who offer PI services and rip off the public, who however ‘will probably have what is needed to gain an individual’s licence and, if so, will be able to continue their unlawful (not necessarily illegal) bad practice with impunity; hence my use of the term “licence to print money”. It is such a scenario where regulation was unable to control bad practice that in the end saw the vehicle immobilisation sector completely out-lawed as the only solution.”

The journal, edited by the ABI secretary Eric Shelmerdine, poses the cover question: is the sun setting on licensing for private investigators? Imossi writes: “I despair at the number of complaints reaching the ABI about the unprofessional behaviour of some non-member agencies masquerading as “Private Investigators”.”

Imossi, pictured, writes that having had the strongest of political indications that at least individual licensing would be implemented by autumn 2014, it really did seem that there would be a move in the right direction. “This is not however going to happen; at least not in 2014. Further, such has been the effectiveness of the lobbying against the introduction of a Code of Practice (one wonders if it is the fear of peer accountability that drives the anti-lobbyists) I am beginning to have some doubt business licensing will be introduced at all.”

For the ABI Journal, now only published online, visit the ABI website – http://www.theabi.org.uk/images/ABI_Journals/journalsummer2014.pdf.

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