The apprenticeship levy that’s coming in from May 2017 is employers’ chance ‘to solve our skills gap’, Simon Banks told a BSIA-Skills for Security (SfS) seminar in the West Midlands. More in the January 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
The Group MD of alarm signalling company CSL DualCom and director of the NSI and BAFE was, with Peter Sherry, interim director-general of SfS, a speaker at the event on Wednesday morning, December 7.
Simon Banks began by saying he was passionate about apprenticeships, and why: “I am in business, I am in the service industry and quite honestly if we don’t fill the skills pipeline that we have, the gap that we have, we are in trouble. I can have the best product, the most innovative service, but if I don’t have the people to install that, it’s the biggest restriction there is.”
He recalled founding with the past chief of SfS David Greer the ‘100 in 100’ campaign to place apprentices with fire and security companies, launched at IFSEC in 2011. So far that campaign has placed 4000 young people into the security industry: visit http://www.a4fs.org/.
Simon said: “I want the best people out there in our industry, because I believe our industry is really good; it’s got great technology; for a young person, it’s a great place to be.”
The most compelling reason to support the new apprenticeship scheme, he went on, was ‘to solve our skills gap’. As he said: “It’s almost a personal victory if you get an electrician or plumber booked for your house. I am talking about the service industry now – they cost a fortune – why are they so expensive? Because they are rare. That’s how it has got in the security industry. We have not got engineers, so the engineers we do have are rare and they are expensive, and this cycle that is happening, the ecosystem if you like, means if they are too expensive, NSI, SSAIB alarm companies cannot afford to pay these salaries and the cycle of life stops.”
He added that companies were not taking on work, because they don’t have enough engineers: “That’s mad, absolutely mad.”
For more on the apprenticeship changes in England (Scotland is still making its own plans), visit gov.uk.
The BSIA and SfS are running two more similar morning seminars, in London SE1 on January 10; and Runcorn on January 19, each to run from about 8.30am to 10.30am. For details visit http://www.bsia.co.uk/events.aspx.
Picture by Mark Rowe; left to right, Peter Sherry; David Wilkinson, director of technical services at the BSIA, who introduced the event; and Simon Banks.
