The cost of being a door supervisor
This review, we were advised, was to ensure that the knowledge and/or skills specification in the syllabus remained up to date.
“Competency renewal” was born out of a five-year rolling plan to completely review the specifications for learning and qualifications. The whole exercise would ensure that “the licensing qualifications continue to reflect best and current industry practice”.
Quite rightly, the review included a consultation process to give the private security industry a say in what the qualification should look like.
Physical intervention, dealing with the 14 to 18 age group and awareness of the terrorist threat were deemed necessary competencies for SIA door personnel. Soon the SIA decided the three competencies should be integrated into the syllabus. From June 2010 all SIA courses for front-line operators included the requirements.
This, as you will appreciate, left the SIA with a slightly difficult problem. From mid-2010 there were two groups of differently trained SIA-badged operators on the front line.
Further consultation was sought on how best to bring the pre-June 2010 operators up to the same standard as those benefiting from the new syllabus. More important, perhaps, than how the training would be integrated was who would pay to ensure that the competencies at some point were or are the same across the industry.
Three options were developed and consulted over; arguably, doing nothing was an option since all qualified SIA front-line operators were getting the experience in any event.
Requiring a ‘top up’ qualification was also considered, renewal of the SIA licence being the kick starter for such a top-up process. Finally, compulsory ‘top up’ or refresher training whenever the licence came up for renewal was also suggested as the third option.
Fast forward to August 2012. The SIA has decided that physical intervention training will become mandatory for all badged operators from February 2013. There’s no longer any discussion about who will pay for the training, merely a requirement that in order to renew the badge or licence, the training must be undertaken.
This requirement comes with a footnote from the boss of the SIA encouraging those supervisors “with older qualifications to consider taking the newer award as soon as they are able”.
Gone are the concerns from 2010 about “being careful to balance the need to have competent operators working in the industry with the economic consequences of imposing a burdensome renewal requirement”. It’s a euphemism for “we’ll wait for a bit longer and then we’ll tell you, you have to pay for the upgrades if you wish to go on as a door supervisor”.
Close protection badged operators are also now in the firing line with consultation currently underway that would see close protection licence holders unable to use their current licence to work as a door supervisor.
This change would mean that either there would be an end totally to the use of close protection licence holders working as door supervisors or a requirement that those holding the close protection licence would require additional training to continue to work as a door supervisor.
This is to bring this specific group of licence holders into line with the training requirements of door supervisors (to include the mandatory training in respect of physical intervention training).
It set me thinking. If public health were to be added to the licensing objectives would all personal licence holders require retraining and if so who would pay? I think that is probably a rhetorical question because I already know the answer!
