The Control Room — Issue 9

Enforcement is the theme this week. The regulator has refreshed the public list of everyone it is currently prosecuting, and it makes for sobering reading. Inside: what that list means for your vetting, the qualification overhaul heading your way, and a CCTV discipline worth drilling into your team.

On 11 June the SIA refreshed its transparency data on active prosecution cases. It is the live list of individuals and companies the regulator is currently taking to court under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, published alongside the outstanding-warrants list. Treat it as a working document, not a press release. Every name on it started the same way: someone deployed, or was deployed, without a valid licence.

Weymouth is the worked example. A door supervisor who worked on an expired licence was fined, and the company director who put him on the door took a twelve-month community order. The officer carried some of it. The person who deployed him carried more. If you run sub-contracted labour on top of your own roster, that exposure is yours too.

Bottom line: if you sign off the manning roster, the licence check is not paperwork. It is the line between a clean deployment and a director in the dock.

The SIA’s review of licence-linked qualifications moves to final specifications this summer, with new qualifications going live in spring 2027 and becoming mandatory for new applicants. The direction is already set: enhanced counter-terror content, updated physical intervention, and advanced searching techniques built into the front-line ticket.

For a CRS or DSM that is a planning signal, not background noise. Anyone you recruit or renew from spring 2027 sits under the new specification, and the training spend that comes with it. Map it now and it is a line in next year’s budget. Leave it and it is a scramble.

Fix: list who on your team renews after spring 2027 and price the new training into next year’s plan this quarter.

BDA training teaches a simple discipline for CCTV: give each frame four seconds before your eye moves on. Less than that and the brain pattern-matches against what it expects to see, not what is actually there. Hostile reconnaissance counts on the fast scan. If your room runs more than six cameras and you are sweeping quickly, this is the discipline to drill into your team.

Key takeaway: speed feels like vigilance. It isn’t.

ACT Awareness e-learning (free, about 45 minutes)

With the national threat level at SEVERE, free training is the cheapest hardening you can do. Counter Terrorism Policing’s course gives every officer the behavioural-indicator baseline that recon detection depends on. Put your team through it before your next shift cycle.

Documents I use on shift: the Daily Occurrence Book and the Incident Report Form. BS 7499 aligned, edit and ship same day. Both from SecureDocUK.

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