FOI release

SIA investigations into fraudulent security training firms

Published 19 October 2023

1. Request

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from you:

1. Whether [REDACTED] has surveyed its buildings for any instances of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC). If that is not the case, is your organisation in the process of surveying its buildings or planning to in the future?
2. How many investigations into fraudulent security training firms has the SIA carried out in the last three years, to the date of your reply (this should be given for every six month period in the last three years)?
3. How many of those investigations have been completed every year?
4. How many staff have been employed by the SIA to investigate fraud, in the last five years?

2. Response

On 5 October 2023 we sent you an email to clarify your FOI request. You responded to us to confirm that in respect of question 2, you are asking for the number of successful prosecutions that have completed within the last three years.

I can confirm that the SIA holds some of this information you have requested. A response to each of your questions has been provided below.

2.1 Use of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC)

The SIA does not hold this information. The SIA is not the organisation responsible for the surveying or planning of buildings. The SIA is the regulator responsible for the private security industry.

2.2 Investigations into fraudulent security training firms, 2020 to 2023

I can confirm that this part of the email will constitute a refusal to deal with your request for the reasons I will set out below.

Exceeding the appropriate cost limit

Section 12(1) – (4) of the Freedom of Information Act allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to comply with the request in its entirety or to confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. In the case of a public authority such as the SIA, the appropriate cost limit is £450.

The ICO guidance The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 sets out how a public authority should estimate whether the work required to obtain information is reasonable and appropriate. In the case of requests that would require work on the part of public authority staff, this is estimated at a rate of £25 per person per hour. This means that 18 hours is considered the appropriate limit.

Reporting limitations within the database where information in respect of criminal investigations into fraudulent security training firms are held means that the information cannot be instantly be isolated and retrieved.

What information can we provide?

For the last three years from 2020 – 2023, we would need to be manually interrogate the system and each case logged within the last three years to retrieve the specific information you have requested. To consider all cases over the three year period would significantly exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours and appropriate cost limit of £450.

Next steps

In order to better facilitate your request, I suggest that you limit the scope of your request, so that we can manually search each investigation until the appropriate cost limit is reached. Given that this will be a very time intensive exercise to manually look at each case and filter out those which relate to your request, I would ask that you limit your search to a particular year within the period that you are interested in.

The SIA will search as many cases as possible up to the appropriate cost limit within this reduced timeframe. If we are able to search the cases well within the appropriate cost limit we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of another year that you would like us to search.

We look forward to you response in respect of this part of your FOI request.

2.3 Completed investigations into fraudulent security training firms, 2020 to 2023

Please be aware that the figure below does not provide an accurate picture of the number of successful prosecutions for security training centre fraud.

Other agencies are able to prosecute fraud offences of this nature, such as The Crown Prosecution Service, Procurator Fiscal and the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland. In addition to this the SIA is not the regulator for qualifications or awarding organisations. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) is the regulator for all training provision in England, including awarding organisations and training centres. Such activity involving allegations of training centre fraud is predominately investigated by Ofqual.

For the last three years, from 2020 to the date of this response, the number of successful prosecutions that have resulted in a guilty verdict or guilty plea from the accused is 2.

2.4 Staff employed by the SIA to investigate fraud

We have interpreted this question to mean criminal investigators. Please be aware that all our criminal investigators will investigate allegations of fraud in the private security industry, but not all of our investigations contain fraud as an element of the offending. The SIA does not employ specific criminal investigators to investigate only fraud or specialist fraud investigators. Investigations for offences under our Act (the Private Security Industry Act 2001) take precedent and make up a large portion of our investigations.

Within the last 18 months the Criminal Investigations team had 8 investigators and 2 managers. As of today’s date the SIA has a total of 18 criminal investigators and 3 managers.

[Reference: FOI 0449]