FOI release

Reports of door supervisors not wearing their SIA licence

Published 22 December 2022

1. Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) I am writing to request information on the following, between the two year period 1 January 2020 to 1 January 1 2022:

• the number of reports received from members of the public, concerning SIA licensed door staff failing to wear their SIA licence in a manner where the front is visible (as required by the Private Security Industry Act)
• of these instances, the number of times the SIA followed up or investigated these cases
• an approximated average time taken to follow up on these cases
• of the cases investigated, how many resulted in enforcement action (e.g. suspension of the operator’s licence, fines, prison sentence etc.)

2. Response

I can confirm that we hold the information that you have requested. This e-mail constitutes a notice of refusal to comply with your request for the reason I will explain below.

2.1 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.

Reporting limitations within the database where this information is held means that the relevant information cannot instantly be isolated and retrieved. Each intelligence log would need to be manually interrogated and to consider intelligence logs over the two year period requested would significantly exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours and appropriate cost limit of £450.

2.2 What information can we provide?

The SIA has produced a report into the prosecution of section 9 Private Security Industry Act 2001 offences for the time frame requested. Section 9 offences concern the contravention of conditions of a licence, which includes the condition requiring a licence holder to wear their licence where it can be seen at all times when engaging in designated licensable activity unless one of the exceptions can be satisfied.

For the time period you have requested, the figures for the prosecutions relating to offences under section 9 Private Security Industry Act 2001 are as follows:

• 2020 – 4
• 2021 – 9

I requested that the figures were further broken down to establish which specifically relate to the failure of a licence holder to wear their licence where it can be seen at all times when engaging in designated licensable activity.

The figures for the prosecutions each year are as follows:

• 2020 – Zero
• 2021 – Zero

When the SIA receives information from a member of the public regarding the conduct of a private security business or its operatives it is treated as intelligence. This is because any information received can only be utilised by the SIA in so far as it informs any investigation into breaches of the PSIA or the licence / ACS criteria and conditions. Issues of this nature are often reported to venues, security businesses and the police.

The SIA does not run a formal complaints scheme in relation to the conduct of businesses or individuals operating in the private security industry. Nor does it operate a complaints scheme in relation to licensed premises.

This means that in order to facilitate your request for information, the SIA would need to manually go through each intelligence log that has been received for alleged s9 offending as reporting limitations do not enable us to narrow down the search to the failure of a licence holder to wear their licence where it can be seen at all times when engaging in designated licensable activity.

It is has been estimated that on average it would take approximately 15 minutes to interrogate each intelligence log. There are several hundreds of intelligence logs that relate to this time frame which means that to interrogate each log to find those that satisfy this request would significantly exceed the appropriate cost limit.

2.3 Next steps

In order to facilitate your request, I suggest that you limit the scope of your request and we can manually search each report until the appropriate cost limit is reached. Given that it is a very time intensive exercise to manually look at each intelligence log I would ask that you limit your search to a couple of months within the period that you are interested in.

The SIA will search as many intelligence logs up to the appropriate cost limit within this reduced timeframe. If we are able to search the logs well within the appropriate cost limit we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of a further month that you would like to be searched.

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

[Reference: FOI 0378]