Policy paper

SIA social media policy

Published 2 March 2021

1. Availability

Our social media accounts are managed by our Communications team. We monitor and update our social media accounts during office hours 09:30 – 18:00, Monday to Friday.

2. Our content

If you follow us, you can expect to receive information on the following:

• news releases
• alerts about new content on our website
• invitations to provide feedback on specific issues on which we are consulting
• updates on our enforcement actions
• SIA licence application tips
• campaigns relevant to security operatives
• customer service messages
• occasional coverage of events
• items of interest to SIA licence holders and our stakeholders

3. Your posts

Any information you give to us in comments or messages belongs to you. We do not own the data that you post. We will hide any posts in which you give personal information about yourself (including your licence number or application number. This is so that we comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulations and Data Protection Act 2018.

We reserve the right to hide any posts that breach our moderation guidelines.

4. Official correspondence

The usual ways of contacting us for official correspondence are detailed in the contact us section of our website.

5. Twitter

If you follow us on Twitter, we will not automatically follow you back. This is so that we do not waste resources dealing with spam or tweets that are not relevant to our regulation of the UK’s private security industry. Being followed by the SIA does not imply endorsement of any kind. We cannot be held responsible for the opinions or tweets of those who follow us on Twitter.

We may occasionally be asked to re-tweet content from other Twitter users. We will consider such requests on a case-by-case basis but will generally honour those from other government departments or official agencies only. In the interests of commercial propriety and competitiveness we will not honour requests from profit-making organisations, as we would not be able to do so fairly.

6. Facebook

If you wish to be kept informed of any updates to our Facebook page, then click on the ‘Like’ link. When you click ‘Like’ on our page, you are making a connection to our page. The page will be displayed in your Facebook profile, and in turn, you will be displayed on our page as a person who likes that page. You will then be able to post a comment on our posts, or posts that we share.

7. Replies and direct messages

We welcome feedback and ideas from our followers. However, if you have questions relating to your licence application the best way to contact us is through your employer or via your online account.

8. Moderation

The purpose of the dialogue on our social media is to enable as many people as possible to submit, rate and comment on our stories or discussions. We want to keep discussion as open as possible and will not attempt to exclude or edit critical opinions. However, to protect these services from abuse, ideas and comments must satisfy some basic conditions.

For this dialogue to comply with the law and with the Civil Service Code, you must not include:

• party political material - these are government social media pages, and we cannot publish party political content (this does not mean you cannot raise controversial issues)
• potentially libellous, false, or defamatory statements
• any commercial endorsement, promotion of any product, service, or publication
• language, which is offensive, extreme, or provocative - this not only includes obvious swear words and insults, but any language to which people reading it could reasonably take offence

Please also ensure that your ideas and comments:

• are respectful of others – comments should not be malicious or offensive in nature, and should not constitute a personal attack on a person’s character
• do not incite hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or sexuality or other personal characteristics
• do not reveal personal details, such as private addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details
• do not break the law – this includes libel, condoning illegal activity, and breaking copyright
• are reasonably concise, and do not constitute spamming of the site
• are in English – unfortunately, we do not currently have the resource to moderate comments in other languages
• are relevant – please do not post messages unrelated to this channel or the subject under discussion