The Control Room — Issue 6

Welcome back. Six issues in. This week one of my officers picked a fight he shouldn’t have, and the real lesson sits in what the DSM did next. Also: the SIA has opened the door on the Martyn’s Law digital portal, and there’s a hard number from Operation Resolute worth carrying into your next training brief.

On 21 May, the SIA opened volunteer access to its new Martyn’s Law digital portal. This is the central system that regulated premises will use from Spring 2027 to handle compliance notifications, document submissions, and the inspection trail. Target testers: owners and managers of publicly accessible buildings, venues with 200+ capacity, retail and shopping centres, hospitality, and security companies servicing those sites.

If your site is in scope, registering as a tester gives you two things. First, early sight of the system you’ll actually be working with. Second, a voice on usability before the SIA locks the design in. Practitioners shape the tool, or corporate stakeholders shape it for them.

The portal is the operational tool, not the legal framework. Different work, same Spring 2027 deadline. Both need a working practitioner’s eye on them.

Bottom line: Spring 2027 is closer than it looks. Get a tester seat now, not the morning after launch.

Operation Resolute is the SIA’s anti-training-fraud operation. The latest running totals: a 120% year-on-year increase in unannounced training centre visits, ten training providers stripped of SIA approval, and 17 individual licences revoked from a single investigation.

That last number does the work. Seventeen people booked a course, paid for it, sat through it (or appeared to), and all 17 are now unlicensed. The regulator is reading qualification records back against attendance evidence and finding the gap.

For a CRS or DSM, the risk isn’t just the fake licence. It’s having a fake-licence officer on your manning sheet when an SIA spot check comes through. You inherit the gap.

Fix: Before you book any course for your team this quarter, check the provider on GOV.UK’s approved centres list and scan Operation Resolute’s enforcement actions for the same name. Five-minute job, big downside avoided.

A manager from another on-site team raised a hygiene complaint about a shared back-of-house area. Food left across shifts, items uncovered, a smell starting to build. Reasonable, substantive complaint.

One of my officers replied territorially. Framed security as operating independently. Said the complaint should never have come direct, that it should have gone through security management. The other manager came back firmly. Both sides were defending position. The actual issue had stopped moving.

That’s when I stepped in. I did not back the officer. The pushback had been off-key, and the complaint had merit. A reset email went to both teams. It acknowledged the concern. It set written standards for the shared space, applying to every team using the area, operational not defensive in wording.

A closing email then went to my ops manager and the other team’s manager, recapping the standard and redirecting future escalation through proper channels, without ever framing that as a correction. Matter closed cleanly. Working relationship intact.

Key takeaway: When your officer goes hard at another department, the instinct to back them up is wrong almost every time. The substantive complaint usually has merit. Acknowledge it, set the standard in writing, redirect future escalation through proper channels. Tone is the move.

SIA back-publishes 2025 Board meeting minutes (GOV.UK)

The SIA released the 23 July 2025 and 6 November 2025 Board minutes together on 22 May. February 2026’s minutes are out too. Worth a 10-minute scan for governance-level signal on the qualifications review, Martyn’s Law staffing, and enforcement posture before the next big drop.

Thanks for reading. If you found this useful, forward it to one colleague who’d benefit — that’s how this grows.

Until next Tuesday.

Andras

Control Room Supervisor & Deputy Security Operations Manager

The Control Room