This week another shock story has been uncovered by File on 4, exposing 4 companies of the 12 they had approached who offered them shortened courses which is contravening the SIA Guidance.

SIA-trained officers play a critical role in supporting crime prevention and ensuring they are adequately trained and equipped to carry out their roles is essential. This report has exposed malpractice in a number of cases and candidates are being offered 6 days of training in only a day and a half.

In both the Manchester Arena and the recent O2 enquires, there were damming reports that highlighted in both incidents, if ‘proper training had been given’ it would have made a decisive difference to the Manchester attack and at the 02 Arena, it was proved that security staff were taking bribes to let more people into the venue.

In 2022 there were 170,000 qualifications awarded by the SIA and clearly the vast majority of training providers and colleges, have provided a good quality of training and met the requirements set out by the SIA. The SIA have responded to the BBC’s investigation and there has already been swift action taken.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this type of activity has been exposed, back in 2015 there was similar action taken against a private training provider who was fraudulently selling courses that should have been 14 days long and awarding qualifications after only 3 hours of training had been completed. The current maximum penalty for working without an SIA licence is £5000 and it is also a criminal offence.

We rely heavily on the SIA to regulate this sector and need robust and punitive action taken against any training company that does not follow the guidelines. We have an SAI member of our team at Axiom, who carries out rigorous checks when we are placing any security candidate forward to our clients.

If you are looking for a team of competent recruiters to support your drive for new security officers, get in touch with us today for an initial consultation.