FOI release

Investigations of SIA licence holders not showing their licence

Published 4 December 2023

1. Request

Could you please let me know:

1. Does the failure to display an SIA licence constitute a criminal offence under section 9 of the Private Security Industry Act 2001?
2. How many complaints has the SIA received regarding contravention of licence conditions?
3. How many complaints related to failure to display a badge?
4. How many complaints (for any reason) resulted in an actual investigation?
5. How many SIA licence holders have had licences revoked or suspended as a consequence of an investigation?
6. How many licence holders has the SIA prosecuted to date as a consequence of contravention of licence conditions?

2. Response

I can confirm that the SIA does hold some of this information.

Some parts of this response will constitute a refusal to deal with your request for the reasons set out below.

The SIA does not run a complaints scheme against security operatives or security companies. The SIA receives intelligence reports about crimes or concerns from members of the public, or from other partner agencies. You can read more about this at report security staff or companies to the SIA. To reflect this, we have changed your questions (2 – 4) to accurately reflect the data we can provide.

The figures provided for questions 4-6 do not provide an accurate picture of the number of prosecutions and criminal investigations that take place within the private security industry. Other agencies are able to prosecute the same offences that we do, such as The Crown Prosecution Service, Procurator Fiscal and the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland. These figures are from the SIA only.

2.1 Does the failure to display an SIA licence constitute a criminal offence under section 9 of the Private Security Industry Act 2001?

Yes, it is a criminal offence for a SIA licence holder to fail to display their SIA licence whilst undertaking licensable activity. It is a criminal offence under section 9(c) of the Private Security Industry Act 2001 (PSIA). It is a criminal offence because the licence holder will be in breach of their licence conditions under section 9 PSIA. One of these is that the licence holder must wear their licence where it can be seen at all times when engaging in designated licensable activity, unless:

• it has been reported lost or stolen
• it is in the SIA’s possession
• the work the licence holder is doing requires that they not be identifiable as a licensed operative. Read more about covert activity.

2.2 How many intelligence reports has the SIA received regarding contravention of licence conditions?

In line with SIA retention schedules, information and data is only held for a maximum period of 7 years. Therefore, we can only provide information between 2017 and 2023 to date (30 November 2023).

Since 1 January 2017, the SIA has received 3,864 intelligence reports in respect of the contravention of licence conditions, an offence under section 9 PSIA.

2.3 How many intelligence reports related to failure to display a badge?

This part of the response will constitute a refusal to deal with this request, for the reasons 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 about the number of reports we have received relating to SIA licence holders 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 we have received over the last 7 years has been provided in answer to your previous question above. 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 about intelligence reports we have received about section 9 PSIA 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 at learn about the SIA licence conditions you must follow.

We have provided you with this figure from 2017 in the answer to the above question. We provide it here again to avoid any confusion:

Since 1 January 2017, the SIA has received 3,864 intelligence reports in respect of the contravention of licence conditions, an offence under section 9 PSIA.

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 attempt to manually search each intelligence log for 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 time frame. 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 another time period that you would like us to search.

Please confirm your position regarding this FOI request and whether you would like any further assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.

2.4 How many intelligence reports (for any reason) resulted in an actual investigation?

Between 1 January 2017 to date (30 November 2023), we have started a total of 459 criminal investigations. This figure includes closed cases, those currently under investigation, those that are in the prosecution process and secondary investigations into the proceeds of crime. It does not indicate whether these criminal investigations passed the Code for Crown Prosecutors evidential stage and public interest test. All criminal investigations were passed over to the SIA’s legal department to consider whether to prosecute.

Investigations for section 9 PSIA offending will usually supplement a larger investigation into other criminal offences, therefore we are unable to break down these figures. The majority of section 9 PSIA matters will result in an official warning being issued, after a check during an inspection operation. To assist you, we have provided the SIA’s figures for the number of official warnings we have issued from 2017 to date (30 November 2023):

Year	Number of official warnings issued
2017	58
2018	106
2019	417
2020	122
2021	53
2022	54
2023	108

2.5 How many SIA licence holders have had licences revoked or suspended as a consequence of the investigation?

This part of the response 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.

The SIA looked into this part of the request with some detail. However, due to our system limitations we are unable to report this level of detail. We are unable to instantly isolate and retrieve the relevant information you have requested about the number of individuals who have had their licences revoked or suspended as a consequence of a section 9 PSIA investigation. It would require us to manually trawl and interrogate a significant amount of data. This therefore would significantly exceed the appropriate time limit of 18 hours and the appropriate cost limit of £450.

What information can we provide?

As you will see from the answers to some other parts of your request, section 9 PSIA offending is mostly dealt with through official warnings. This is one of the many ways we enforce compliance with our regulatory regime. The SIA has a range of compliance enforcement options falling short of prosecution, and most cases are dealt with by those lesser measures. However, the SIA may act as a public prosecutor for offences against the PSIA as well as other offences that could have a detrimental impact on the private security industry. We reserve this for the most serious cases. We can provide you with our conviction statistics for section 9 PSIA offending since 2017:

Year	Number of convictions for section 9 PSIA offences
2017	2
2018	2
2019	2
2020	2
2021	1
2022	0
2023	4

If an individual is referred for prosecution for a section 9 PSIA offence, it is SIA process that this individual’s licence is suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. The licence holder will be given an opportunity to appeal this suspension decision: first to the SIA and then to a local magistrates or sheriff court. If it is determined that a prosecution meets the evidential stage and public interest test and an individual is convicted of a section 9 PSIA offence, then their licence will be revoked. In the above cases, all of these individuals had their licences revoked after conviction.

You can read more about why we would revoke or suspend your licence and our licensing criteria on our website. Get Licensed explains our legal powers, what criminal offences we take into account, how we take them into account, the appeals process and more detailed information on suspending and revoking licences.

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 attempt to manually search our case files until the appropriate cost and time limit is reached. We would suggest a particular month within a particular year as we process a huge volume of licences every month. The SIA will search as many cases within the appropriate cost and time limit, within a particular time frame. 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.

Please confirm your position in respect of this FOI request and whether you would like any further assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.

2.6 How many licence holders has the SIA prosecuted to date as a consequence of contravention of licence conditions?

Since 2017, the SIA has prosecuted a total of 14 people for contravention of licence conditions.

[Reference: FOI 0465]