The UK’s SIA Security Training Scandal!

For years there has been a huge problem in the UK security industry, the awful standard of many new security officers. Officers that simply do not seem to understand the concept of security, or that are unable to communicate safely using basic English, despite allegedly having recently passed a mandatory training course. All of these “dubious” officers seemed to be equipped with SIA Door Supervisor licenses, despite never having any chance of being employed as such, and none can remember what any part of their training consisted of.

With recent significant improvements to Security Industry Authority mandatory training, and increases in checks and balances, everyone was optimistic that the matter would improve. Sadly, the cowboy training companies find a way around every procedure designed to stop their operation, and the situation today is as bad as it has always been, if not worse.

Make no mistake, THIS is the reason that the security industry is being held back! Public perceptions will not change, and professionalisation of the industry cannot happen until this problem is a distant memory.

I’ve mentioned these cowboy trainers before and the fraudulent certificates that they will dish out for cash, however, a friend (name removed for safety purposes), went undercover recently and it wasn’t long before he found one of these cowboy organisations.

The company that he found was based in Manchester but apparently has offices in Sheffield, Birmingham & London.

Please note that the matter has been reported to the SIA for investigation and hopefully prosecution, so I will withhold the suspect company name, but my friend found their training courses advertised on WhatsApp. He then made contact posing as a potential customer, and spoke to a representative of the training company. We will call this  “assistant” Mr X, who turned out to be an incredibly helpful chap…..

Our guy pretended to be a potential student that needed to do an “online” course as he couldn’t take 5 days off work to do legitimate training.

Mr X: “Yes. We can do a one day express, no online. Costs a lot more though.” He went on to say during a voice message, (has been recorded), that his company was only allowed to submit four of these “special” courses a month, that was why it was so expensive!

Mr X told our undercover student, that the special courses were only for those that really can’t do a full five or six days and cost “£450 all inclusive. Normally it is £530” (The legitimate course actually costs £255 including first aid.)

Our mole asked if they provide an Edexcel certificate and was told by Mr X “Yes that’s right we only use them. No other awarding body besides them. They are the best in uk by far.” 

Glad to see that Mr X is so concerned about quality!

Then the big question. Our guy needed to make sure that he would get a certificate regardless. “Are you sure brother I don’t fail? This is lot of money.” He asked.

Mr X was most reassuring: “Bro come on. We been doing it for over 15 years”

“We know how to look after our clients.”

“Try us and u will know for urslf.”

“Seeing is believing my bro Dw we got you👌”

“Im sure you can copy and paste right ?”

“Long as u r there with us on the day we take care of everything for you.”

Let’s just look at what our Mr X is actually saying here. Pay us a pile of money over the legitimate cost, and show up on just one occasion, then as long as you can copy and paste some answers, we will take care of everything. (No doubt the 92% pass rate mentioned, referred to those not doing the “special” course.)

And they have been getting away with this for “over 15 years”!

This is just one example, uncovered not by the regulator or Police, but by a private, albeit highly motivated, citizen. There can be no doubt that this is just the tip of the iceberg and until it is stopped, and people like Mr X and his kind, are behind bars, the front line of the security industry can never be improved, regardless of the good intentions of the security industry’s establishment. 

But frankly I think it is much worse than that.

The amount of these fraudulent security officers in our shopping centres, offices, ports, hospitals and more, represents a genuine danger to themselves, and those they must interact with in any emergency situation. Let’s hope that this is taken seriously and stamped out before there is an incident that leads to a substantial loss of life, due to the incompetence of one of these “crash course” security officers.

Rollo Davies.