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FOI release

If the SIA does or will provide APIs for licence checks

Published 24 August 2026

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/if-the-sia-does-or-will-provide-apis-for-licence-checks/if-the-sia-does-or-will-provide-apis-for-licence-checks

Request

It is possible to search for the status of a single licence on the register of licence holders. However, this is not an option for a large company with thousands of employees, especially since this check must be done at least daily to ensure licences have not been revoked. Having a human do this manually is also not reasonable for high volume checks.

Thus, I have the following questions:

  1. SIA Verify and SIA Checker provide paid APIs to run checks in volume. Does the SIA provide them some special API or are they automating checks using the website mentioned above?
  2. Does or is the SIA going to provide an API to run a volume check programmatically any time soon?
  3. If the answer to question 2 is no, is there at least an API to run a single check with reasonable rate limits?
  4. If the answer to both questions 2 and 3 is no, what is the reasoning to not provide such a service?
  5. Please provide a list of API endpoints available at api.sia.gov.uk/external/rolh/api/ and documentation for them.

Response

Response to question 1

No, the SIA does not provide any special APIs, dedicated data feeds, or other tools to SIA Verify, SIA Checker or any equivalent third-party services for checking licence status in volume.

Response to question 2

The SIA recognises the value of improving how businesses can check licence status at scale. Following the modernisation of the main register of licence holders service, further improvements to support higher-volume or programmatic checking are in the pipeline for consideration and development. We are not able to confirm whether this includes API or not, or a delivery date at this stage.

Response to question 3

The same position applies to a single-check API. We do not currently provide a public API for single licence checks with published rate limits, but this type of functionality will be considered in due course as part of planned service improvements.

Response to question 4

The current service has been designed to allow users to check the status of individual licence holders through the register of licence holders. The SIA has prioritised the modernisation of that core public service before considering additional API-based access. API-based access will be considered as part of future improvements, but we are unable to commit to this or any timelines.

Any future API provision would need to consider, resolve and take account of service design, security data protection, operational resilience, demand management, and fairness and openness of access.

Response to question 5

The SIA does not publish or provide documentation for public use of endpoints at api.sia.gov.uk/external/rolh/api/. These endpoints are not provided as a public API service for external users. Therefore, we would not hold public API documentation for the purpose described in your request.

Personalised watchlists

It may be helpful for you to know that if you have a business account you can create personalised watchlists to monitor your licensed operatives. A watchlist can tell you when licences are due to expire, whether they are active, suspended or revoked. We have included a link to the section of our website which provides further information including videos.

[Ref: FOI 0622]

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