SubscribeIn order for the Approved Contractor Scheme to fulfil its objective of becoming the gold-standard of quality for security service suppliers, it must become both harder to achieve and mandatory, argues Tim Whitfield of ISS Security Group.
At the time of writing there are no fewer than 348 Approved Contractors listed on the Security Industry Authority website (register of approved contractors see http://www.the-sia.org.uk/home/acs/roac.htm). Also to be found there are the details of the two contractors who have had their exalted status removed by standards verifiers.
On Thursday 30th March 2006 I had the pleasure of representing my company, International Security & Surveillance Limited (the company at the heart of the ISS Security Group) at an awards ceremony held in Piccadilly's glamorous Le Meridien Hotel. At this event we were presented with our ACS plaque and received the congratulations of the then Chief Executive, John Saunders. The invitation read as follows, "Congratulations on achieving Approved Contractor status. By doing so, your company has distinguished itself as being one of the very best providers of private security services in England and Wales."
During the event I took the opportunity to quiz Deputy CEO Andrew Drane about the future of ACS (the Approved Contractor Scheme). We agreed that a sensible estimate for the final total of ACS approvals was likely to be between 200 and 250 - although he was understandably reluctant to guess at the numbers and couldn't know how many applicants there would be. With qualified companies set to top 350 in the next published figures, I can safely say we vastly underestimated. My query about whether and when ACS would become compulsory was met with a polite rebuff. The SIA had no firm plans either way.
Fast forward 12 months to Thursday 22nd March 2007 and I was in attendance at the London Chamber of Commerce Security Industry dinner at the equally glamorous Mayfair Hotel. At the end of 2006 John Saunders had resigned to take up a post as Managing Director of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, and our guest speaker, Baroness Henig (former Chair of the Lancashire Police Authority), had taken up the reins, albeit only six weeks previously.
I felt compelled to ask the same question that I had posed a year previously. What plans did the SIA have, if any, to make the ACS a compulsory qualification? Again I was rebuffed, again politely. Baroness Henig felt that being so new to the role, she wasn't qualified to offer a definitive answer.
Why is this important? Simply because ACS was supposed to separate the wheat from the chaff, to rid our industry of cowboy operators and to be a guarantee of quality for purchasing organisations. Prior to March 2006, bona fide operators had to use a catalogue of gongs and accreditations to substantiate their claims to quality and minimum standards were determined by a complex web of competing 'qualifications', not least among which was membership of the guarding section of the British Security Industry Association (the BSIA). ACS was to simplify the whole mess and bring us one coherent and legitimised standard to aim for.
Buyers need to have certainty that they are selecting from a pool of expert and committed suppliers - and ACS was to be the mechanism to deliver that certainty. If, as an industry, we cannot offer this then we haven't actually moved any further forward. Why does it need to be mandatory? Because if the Private Security Industry Act 2001 is to have any teeth, and if the agency set up to administer its provisions - namely the SIA - is to have credibility, then non-qualifying companies ought to be outlawed, just as the act of employing non-Licensed guards is now illegal. Surely what's right for the guard is right for his or her employer.
Currently, the BSIA declares 128 companies as members - making it a far more exclusive 'club' than ACS. Many speculated that ACS would be the death-knell for the BSIA, but now we find ourselves turning back to it for leadership.
The big problem with ACS is how companies qualify. We, in common with every other early entrant to the scheme, used the Fast Track route only because the much-delayed standard was finally published just days before the scheme went live. But Fast Track is still in operation and it works by contractors filling out a self-assessment form online. Small wonder so many companies have pitched into the scheme.
Verification must then take place within 12 months (ours was in December last year and yes, we passed with flying colours) - and this is where the rigour comes in, with approximately 90 quality standards having to be met. But with the SIA prioritising 'bringing companies up to the standard' and only using withdrawal of ACS as 'a last resort', I worry for the integrity of the scheme. Meanwhile, it is perfectly legal for companies to operate without ACS, or indeed any minimum standards whatsoever, just as long as they employ Licensed guards. When it comes to ACS, you could be forgiven for asking 'what's the point of it all?'
The point is this: the contract security industry is (still) crying out for a quality-based, transparent and auditable measure of minimum quality standards. At this time I fear we have a hotch-potch, with Licensing applicable in England and Wales only (Scotland implements Licensing in November 2007); in-house security guards are exempt with no timetable to apply the same rules to them as apply to contract security guards (why? They do the same job!); there's a bewildering array of Licenses available depending on the role being performed by an individual officer - meaning that many need two or even three separate Licenses; and the Fast Track route to the ACS standard is open to all, so that the onus is now on the SIA to strip poor performers of their status rather than qualify applicants on their merits. Remember, only two companies have had their ACS standard withdrawn since the scheme's inception. Meanwhile buyers are left to speculate as to whether contractors are truly gold-standard or whether they are just taking advantage of the self-assessment system to display the 'exclusive' ACS badge that we were once so proud of.
I am a passionate believer in Licensing and indeed the Approved Contractor Scheme. Well-managed, both promise to deliver the standards our industry so badly needs. It is to be hoped that Baroness Henig gets her feet under the SIA table quickly and, to mix my metaphors, gets it back on the rails with all due speed. Ultimately, if we as contractors are struggling to find the logic in it all, what chance do buyers have?