FOI release

SIA licence holders reported for not displaying their licence

Updated 4 December 2023

1. Request

Since 1 January 2022:

1. How many times have SIA licence holders been reported to the Authority for not displaying their SIA licence in accordance with the law?
2. How many times has the SIA initiated criminal proceedings against SIA licence holders who have failed to display their SIA licence in accordance with the law?

2. Response

I can confirm that the SIA holds some of this information.

2.1 Question 1

This part of the email will constitute a refusal to deal with this request for the reasons I have 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.

We are unable to break down our intelligence figures to instantly isolate and retrieve the relevant information you have requested in respect of the number of reports we have received about SIA operatives failing to display their SIA licence. The total number of intelligence reports that specifically relate to the failure to display an SIA licence would require us to manually trawl and interrogate a significant amount of data - the total number of reports can be seen below under the next subheading. It is this number of reports that we would have to manually go into and interrogate to determine whether it was a report about an operative failing to display their SIA licence whilst at work. This therefore would significantly exceed the appropriate time limit of 18 hours and the appropriate cost limit of £450.

What information can we provide?

We are able to provide you with a figure and this is in respect of intelligence reports we have received in respect of section 9 Private Security Industry Act (PSIA) 2001 offending. Section 9 PSIA makes it an offence to contravene any of the licence conditions that are attached to an SIA licence when it is granted. A full list of the SIA’s licence conditions can be viewed here: Learn about the SIA licence conditions you must follow. It is a condition of an SIA licence to display your licence at all times whilst undertaking licensable activity. There are some caveats to this and you can read more about those by clicking on the above link and selecting the internal link on the webpage called ‘covert activity’.

Since 1 January 2022, the SIA has received 1,529 intelligence reports in respect of general section 9 Private Security Industry Act 2001 offending (contravention of SIA licence conditions).

Next steps

In order to better facilitate your request, I suggest that you consider refining your request to a particular time frame so that we can attempts to manually search each intelligence log in respect of section 9 PSIA offending until the appropriate cost and time limit is reached. We would suggest a particular month within a particular year. The SIA will search as many reports within the appropriate cost and time limit within a particular timeframe. If we are able to search the files well within the appropriate cost and time limit we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of a further time period that you would like us to search.

I would be grateful if you could confirm your position in respect of this FOIA request and whether you would like any further assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.

2.2 Question 2

Since 1 January 2022, the SIA has not initiated criminal proceedings against anyone for failing to display their SIA licence in accordance with section 9 of the Private Security Industry Act 2001.

[Reference: FOI 0463]