FOI release

Performance of the SIA Inspections and Enforcement function

Updated 3 January 2024

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1. Request

Can you please provide historical data, 2003 onwards, relating to the performance of the SIA Inspections and Enforcement function. This should include, year by year, data for the following points of interest:

  • Licences revoked
  • SIA formal warnings issued
  • Licences granted
  • Licence applications refused
  • Number of improvement notices issued
  • Number of intelligence and other external reports of concern received
  • The number of criminal investigations started
  • Investigations progressed towards a criminal prosecution
  • Number of successful prosecutions against individuals and businesses
  • Non-compliant businesses which had ACS accreditation removed
  • Site visits or inspections conducted

2. Response

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

In line with SIA retention schedules, information relevant to your request is held for a maximum period of 7 years. Therefore, we can only provide information between 2017 and 2023. Some information cannot be broken down per year due to database limitations and permissions.

For the below, your points of interest have been grouped to provide more streamlined data.

2.1 Licences revoked, granted, and refused

Year Granted Refused Revoked
2017 132,348 1,986 1,483
2018 149,072 1,735 1,127
2019 132,613 1,693 934
2020 144,096 1,418 940
2021 171,610 1,317 1,069
2022 144,787 1,367 1,260
2023 145,684 1,580 2,213

2.2 Formal warnings issued

Between 1 January 2017 and today’s date (2023) a total of 1,558 formal warnings have been issued.

2.3 Number of improvement notices issued

The SIA is only able to retrieve data about security companies which have ACS approval, and not companies who were not approved at the time the improvement notice was issued, but now are.

Between 1 January 2017 and today’s date (2023) a total of 10 improvement notices have been issued to approved contractors.

2.4 Number of intelligence and other external reports of concern received

From 1 January 2017 and today’s date (2023) the following number of intelligence reports were received:

Year Number of reports
2017-2018 4,548
2018-2019 5,870
2019-2020 6,528
2020-2021 5,037
2021-2022 5,150
2022-2023 6,869

These figures include reports from members of the public, partner agencies and internally developed intelligence.

2.5 Number of criminal investigations started

The figures provided below 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.

Between 1 January 2017 and today’s date (2023) a total of 459 criminal investigations have commenced. This figure includes closed cases, those under investigation at present and those that are in the prosecution process. All of these progressed towards criminal prosecution. This does not indicate whether these criminal investigations passed the Code for Crown Prosecutors (whether they passed the evidential stage and public interest test). All criminal investigations were passed over to the SIA’s Legal department for consideration for prosecution.

2.6 Investigations progressed towards a criminal prosecution

The figures provided below 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.

Year Number of investigations
2017 4
2018 30
2019 52
2020 72
2021 89
2022 118
2023 94

2.7 Number of successful prosecutions against individuals and businesses

The figures provided below 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.

Year Number of convictions - individuals
2017 20
2018 39
2019 25
2020 20
2021 17
2022 27
2023 30
Year Number of convictions - businesses
2017 6
2018 3
2019 5
2020 4
2021 5
2022 2
2023 3

2.8 ACS accreditation removed

Year Approval lapsed Approval withdrawn Combined total
2017 28 17 45
2018 36 17 53
2019 38 23 61
2020 51 15 66
2021 36 12 48
2022 41 32 73
2023 20 30 50

2.9 Site visits or inspections conducted

From 1 January 2017 and today’s date (2023) a total of 16 inspections have been carried out against ACS security companies.

3. Supplementary information

We wish to provide you with some more statistics to supplement parts 2.3 and 2.9 of your FOI request. These figures relate to all security companies, not just those within our Approved Contractor Scheme.

Since 1 January 2017 to date the SIA has:

  • issued 65 improvement notices
  • conducted 573 inspections

[Reference: FOI 0469]

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