FOI release

Number of SIA licence holders with criminal convictions

Updated 20 November 2023

1. Request

• How many front line and non-front line licence holders are there?
• Out of those, how many have any criminal convictions you are aware of?
• Out of the criminal convictions, how many relate to:
  • Violence
  • Domestic violence
  • Sexual offences
  • Road Traffic or driving
  • Theft and burglary
  • Criminal damage
  • Fraud
  • Harassment
  • Drugs
• How many people have been to prison and hold an SIA licence?

2. Response

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

2.1 Number of front line and non-front line licence holders

This information is readily available on the GOV.UK website. You can view it here: SIA licence holders.

We publish this data every month. Please select the relevant month you are after, which will open a spreadsheet. Please then select ‘Licences by sector and gender’.

For more information about relevant sectors and the difference between front line and non-front line licences you can visit these pages: Find out if you need an SIA licence and Apply for an SIA licence.

2.2 How many have criminal convictions?

Please be aware that these figures cover any criminality and not just convictions on a criminal record. Please also be aware that these figures are based solely on criminality identified to us during the application process only and not on any new criminality that would be reported to us directly by the licence holder over their 3-year licence term.

During the application process criminality is flagged to us via Disclosure and Barring Service checks, Disclosure Scotland checks, Access Northern Ireland checks, self-declaration, overseas criminality certificates and public body investigation assessments.

The figures are:

• Front line licence holders with criminality disclosed to the SIA during the application process: 55,166
• Non-front-line holders with criminality disclosed to the SIA during the application process: 965
• Total: 55,910

2.3 Breakdown of convictions and number who have received prison sentences

This part of the email will constitute a refusal to deal with questions 3 and 4 of your 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 does not capture and store details of individual offences and their related disposals/penalties on the criminality assessments we receive, which means that the relevant information you have requested cannot be instantly isolated and retrieved. Each licence application with flagged criminality would need to be manually interrogated to find this requested information. As you can see from the figures provided above, that means we would have to manually interrogate 55,910 licence applications. For each question, we have calculated this to take about 30 minutes per file. This would take so long because we would have to then break down the data, particularly in respect of the offences that may have been disclosed on a criminality assessment and categorise them in the way you have asked. Given the number of applications we have with criminality and it taking us 30 minutes to go into each licence application individually, it would take us 27,955 hours to retrieve the information you have requested. The cost of retrieving this information would be £698,875. This significantly exceeds the appropriate time limit of 18 hours and the appropriate cost limit of £450.

What information can we provide?

The information we can provide on criminality of licence holders is provided above in the two questions you’ve asked because we do store this information.

Next steps

Due to the volume of licence applications we receive, even on a monthly basis, a shorter time frame within which to manually interrogate licence applications to retrieve this data would still heavily exceed the time and cost limitation thresholds. We do, however, have a large database of all the FOI’s previously submitted to us, some of which are similar to this request. You can search this database here which may reveal other information relating to criminality: Transparency and freedom of information releases.

[Reference: FOI 0461]