Interviews

SIA chief at ST15 Heathrow

by Mark Rowe

The prospect of a cut in the price of a licence fee application in 2016 was raised by the new chief executive of the Security Industry Authority, Alan Clamp, in a talk to ST15 Heathrow. However, what he did not say was as significant as what he did – there was no mention from him of business licensing, as aired (and postponed last year) during the previous Coalition Government.

Alan Clamp, pictured, joined the regulator in early summer from a regulation background. And it was there he began his review of the SIA, including that peek at the future. In 2016, ‘probably April’, the licence application fee of £220 will drop by ten per cent, he said. He spoke too of further reduction in licence fees and belonging to the approved contractor scheme. As a sign of how the Conservatives are insisting on lean Government, including its arms-length bodies such as the SIA, the regulator’s costs this year are about £20m, compared with the £30m of three or four years ago. As for his list of sectors regulated by the SIA, most significant was that in front of private investigators was the word ‘maybe’. He pointed out that the original, 2001 Private Security Industry Act included private investigators (PIs). And Home Secretary Theresa May in July 2013 did say that PIs would have regulation, arising from the Leveson Inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal. But as Alan Clamp said, the challenge is that ‘nobody can quite agree what they [PIs] are’. He gave the example of investigative journalists, that might fall under a PI definition. He added: “If we do have to go down that route [PI licensing], there will be a lot of consultation about defining that group.” He reported that the UK has some 375,000 SIA licences, and as some people have dual licences, that works out at 325,000 licence-holders.

More from Alan Clamp’s speech, and more pictures of the event at the Park Inn Hotel in west London , in the December 2015 print issue of Professional Security magazine.

The ST series of conference-exhibitions returns to the same venue on Wednesday, October 26. Other ST16 dates and venues are Midlands (Nottingham, Thursday, February 4), Ireland (Dublin, Wednesday, April 6), North (Manchester, Tuesday, July 5).

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