FOIA Data Request

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 8:10 am

We have today emailed a data request under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act to the SIA.
They have 20 days to respond under the Act and we will update you on the result as soon as we have it.

The request reads as follows;

Quote:

Under the Freedon of Information Act we would like to request the following information;
Approximately how many individuals (Security Officers) working within the Manned Guarding sector of the British security industry were contacted or provided feedback during the initial research into licencing prior to the licencing requirements being developed for this sector?

We understand that extensive research was carried out by Perpetuity Research and possibly others on your behalf with regard to licencing of the Manned Guarding sector of the British security industry, please provide copies of these finding or alternatively any other findings or reports on which you based the final licencing criteria decision.

In order to reduce postage costs, emailed data is acceptable.

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 1:57 am

We have received confirmation from the SIA that they have received our request and they also confirm that they have passed it on 'to the relevant department'.
I await their next communication with baited breath!!!

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:20 am

I see nothing changes with the SIA!

Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 4:53 pm

I have recieved another email from the SIA;

Quote:

We need further clarification of the information that you are requesting. Please give us specific details of the information that you require and please be as specific as possible as this will help us locate this information promptly

Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 5:10 pm

I have replied as follows;

Quote:

My apologies if my request was not specific enough.

To recap - the SIA conducted various research into the private security industry prior to developing the licensing criteria for the Manned Guarding sector of the industry. Part of that research involved canvassing the industry trade bodies such as the BSIA, the private security companies themselves and those that worked within the industry at grass roots level - the security officers.

We are trying to determine;
1 - the number of security officers who were contacted or provided feedback to the SIA during the consultation period 2 - the number of security officer who provided feedback on the consultation process via their employer or an agent (such as Perpetuity Research) who were acting on behalf of the SIA.

If private security companies canvassed their employees and provided this information to the SIA as part of the consultation process we would like to see the results of these - one must presume they provided such data in the form of a report?

We appreciate that Data Protection must be considered and anonymised data is perfectly acceptable - we are simply trying to determine the number of respondents to the consultation process, whether they were a trade body, employer or employee within the industry and what the actual responses (anonymised) were.

Perhaps I am going senile or something but can someone please tell me where my original email was ambigous?

Newbie Joined: Nov 19, 2004 Posts: 7

Number of people issued with SIA frontline Vehicle Immobilisers licence = 91

Number of people issued with SIA non-frontline Vehicle Immobilisers licence = 31

These are the number of people with licence on 24th April .this is a very low number as there are 600 people trainined in VI.

I hope the S.I.A improve in thesecurity guarding Industry.Many People in the industry have lost their jobs.

Please check the link out below
http://www.sito.co.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SITO.woa/1/wo/baUvirHmx7WbkExDHym7jw/3.0.43.3.40.2

<Edited: Post off topic and used as a blatant excuse to advertise which has already been pointed out as not allowed>

Rising Star Joined: Apr 27, 2005 Posts: 56

david1977 wrote:

P.S If anyone is interested *********

Please check the link out below
http://***********

We are ********

This is part of the requirement for training for the S.I.A training courses.

Please email me at <removed by Admin Staff>

I'm sure it says this type of canvassing is not appropriate netiquette in the forums.

I have restrained from advertising my companies services with posts, I'm sure everyone else can do the same David.

We are all trying to make our companies succeed but the old phrase "the right time and place ..." comes to mind.

**EDIT** - due to John's post editing above I have removed the core content of the quote.

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 5:53 am

As we expected, we have yet again, been ignored by the SIA.
I have just isued the following reminder by email

Quote:

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 s10(1) provides that responses must be made within 20 days of an FOIA application – this time limit has been exceeded by several months now.

Can you confirm whether it is your intention to respond or whether you require more time to prepare your response?

If I hear nothing from them within 7 days, I will be forwarding all correspondence to the Information Commissionaire, at which point they may face prosecution.

I think everyone has right to know how many individual security officers were consulted prior to the licensing criteria being decided upon - after all, one of their specific tasks was to consult with employees but no mention is ever given to this aspect of their research in any of their publications.

The PSIA legislation has a sevre finacial mpact on individuals working within the manned guarding sector, I feel it is only proper that evidence is brought into the public domain to confirm r deny whether they were actually consulted or not and whether that consultation had any bearing whatsoever on thier decision making process.

Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 1:31 pm

Just to confirm that the SIA failed to respond to the last email so I am preparing all documentation to be sent to the Information Commissionaire as soon as possible.

As a result, the SIA may well face prosecution for failing to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. This is a rather unfortunate situation for the SIA as it is not exactly going to do them any favours as far as public trust goes.

The Guild very much regrets having to force this issue but we feel that both the public and those working within the various licencable sectors have a right to know the truth regarding the number (or lack thereof) of individuals consulted.

As some of you will know, our news articles are syndicated to a number of other popular websites - for this reason, I have just posted a relevant news article.

Newbie Joined: Jul 22, 2005 Posts: 2

Not sure i have put this in the right section, i have a small security comapny based in sussex, The S.I.A. charges £190.00 for a Police check as we all by now know (and as we are told once you have your SIA you can work as a security Guard as your checks would have passed) but after reciving the disclosure forms on my self and my staff have found that the police check does not cover _ protection of the child Act, Protection of vulnerable Adults or the Education Act, as one of my main contracts is NHS how many security Guards are working without the appropiate Checks Thanks to the SIA.
surley if they are going to register all security personnell in every sector how come they are not covering the checks on what i would consider is a must as the majority of hospitals now have security and deal with the aboth acts so it seems that the SIA are not covering all bases on Checks, so at present i have to put my staff through the SIA and then a private company for the rest of the above checks, isnt it about time the SIA made sur that there left and right hand are working together otherwise what is the point!!!

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 5:48 pm

I'm going to look into this further but just wanted to reply so you know you are not being ignored.
First of all, the £190 covers the cost of the criminal records check and the administration and issuing of the licence. Only around £30 to £40 of that £190 is for the CRB check - not being picky, I just wanted to clarify that for our other members.

I am fairly certain that criminals acts that involve abuse or violence toward children or the elderly would be covered by the CRB check even though there might not be those three specific Acts mentioned by the SIA.
I have to confess, I am not familiar with those particular pieces if legislation so if you can bear with me while I do some research I'll get back to you on this.

Have you asked the SIA if convictions under these Acts would result in a CRB check failure?

Rising Star Joined: Apr 27, 2005 Posts: 56

John_Haywood wrote:

Only around £30 to £40 of that £190 is for the CRB check

Thought I would add to this as you can get your own PNC check from your local Police station (which will be a full Police Criminal Records print) for £10.00.

Strange how they arrived at a figure of £190.00 don't you think?
Even though they are using the CRB as opposed to a PNC, the other £150-£160 for adminstration costs? come on, I worked as an Administrative Manager for 2 years and anyone who can justify £150 for processing 1 application form is either taking the "Michael" or is extremely slow at his/her job. Call me sarcastic but .........

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 5:44 pm

Quote:

The S.I.A. charges £190.00 for a Police check as we all by now know (and as we are told once you have your SIA you can work as a security Guard as your checks would have passed) but after reciving the disclosure forms on my self and my staff have found that the police check does not cover _ protection of the child Act, Protection of vulnerable Adults or the Education Act, as one of my main contracts is NHS how many security Guards are working without the appropiate Checks Thanks to the SIA.

In reply to the post by Nemsecc:

I'm not 100% sure about exactly which areas the SIA include in their checks, but a STANDARD disclosure covers the following:

QUOTE:

" These are primarily for posts that involve working with children or vulnerable adults. Standard Disclosures may also be issued for people entering certain professions, such as members of the legal and accountancy professions.

The Standard Disclosure contains details of all convictions held on the Police National Computer including current and 'spent' convictions as well as details of any cautions, reprimands or final warnings.

If a position involves working with children, the Disclosure will indicate whether information is held on government department lists, held by the Department of Health and Department of Education and Skills of those who are banned from working with children. The Disclosure also includes information held by the Department of Health of those considered unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults. "

An ENHANCED disclosure:

" These are for posts which involve a far greater degree of contact with children or vulnerable adults.

In general the type of work will involve regularly caring for, supervising, training or being in sole charge of such people. Examples include Independent Social Workers, Health Professionals, and Teacher, Scout or Guide leader.

Enhanced Disclosures are also issued for certain statutory purposes such as gaming and lottery licenses.

This level of Disclosure involves an additional level of check to those carried out for the Standard Disclosure. An Enhanced Disclosure includes a check on local police records. Where local police records contain additional information which might be relevant to the post the applicant is being considered for, the Chief Officer of Police may release information for inclusion in an Enhanced Disclosure. Exceptionally, and in a very small number of circumstances (typically to protect the integrity of current police investigations), additional information may be sent under separate cover to the Counter signatory and should not be revealed to the applicant."

End quote.

Well I'll leave you to pick the bones out of that lot but my interpretation is that a standard disclosure would suffice for licensing purposes.

John:

Quote:

I am fairly certain that criminals acts that involve abuse or violence toward children or the elderly would be covered by the CRB check even though there might not be those three specific Acts mentioned by the SIA.
I have to confess, I am not familiar with those particular pieces if legislation so if you can bear with me while I do some research I'll get back to you on this.

Have you asked the SIA if convictions under these Acts would result in a CRB check failure?

You are correct in your assumption and yes, you can bet your ass they will........

Hope this helps a little?

Take care all.

Mike

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:01 am

A bit off-topic I know but I need to 'vent'.
I have recieved some interesting and very disturbing news recently from some collegues..........
One had his licence application returned, with his check for £190 because he sent TOO MUCH paperwork proving his identity.

The other had his application returned (but his cheque cashed) for missing out one document - when the SIA were contacted regarding this, he was told that the £190 was for 'processing' and his processing failed because he did not send the correct documents.
Now I can understand the last application failing because he was, erm, silly enough to forget to send one needed document, but to charge him £190 for the privelage thats just not on IMHO.

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 1:41 pm

I have just been informed of another case where too much identity proof documentation was sent with a license application and the application was refused because of that - absolutely ridiculous!!
I'm not sure which planet they are living on but that is simly not on.