My reference to a sunny March came back to haunt me in a wet and chilly April. Nevertheless, I’ve continued to meet with people involved in the industry and Government on the impact of the future regulatory regime.
The Home Office will lead the public consultation on the proposals and this is expected to be later this year. As March marks the end of our financial year, I have also spent time reviewing our finances and performance.
We aim to process 80% of all correctly completed applications in 25 days or less. In 2011-2012, we managed to process 93% against this target, and nearly 75% of licences were issued within 15 days.
I’m pleased to say that our Customer Service Excellence Award has been renewed following our assessment this year. There have also been continuing high levels of compliance during our inspections (around 98%) and a number of successful and high profile prosecutions during the year.
Improvements to services for licence holders
I appreciate that, while the overall performance is high, it is how we deal with individuals that matters. On that basis, we are continuing to seek ways in which we can make things better.
We have completed a number of improvements to our services for licence holders. These include changes to our website and developments to the ‘E-fill’ application service which will provide a more user friendly system and allow us to offer a faster service.
Significant improvements have also been made to the service we provide to companies. We are now able to supply companies with information on the reason for application rejections, and we’ve also improved our company tracker system. This will, I hope, help more companies submit bulk applications.
A regular concern of licence holders (which we share) is the quality of training and, in particular, malpractice in training. We review action in this area regularly. During the 2011-2012 financial year, 76 allegations of malpractice were reported. 55 were identified by awarding organisations through their own investigations and quality assurance checks, 12 were identified by the SIA, six by the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) and three allegations were reported anonymously.
All such allegations are investigated by awarding organisations and, last year, their actions resulted in the withdrawal of training centre approval for nine training providers and the suspension of nine centres. 24 qualifications were withdrawn due to proven training malpractice.
Preparations for the Games
Our preparations are continuing for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, and we’re working with the suppliers of private security to plan for this event (which, as you know, is now less than three months away).
Finally, I have recently asked for an analysis of our licence holders, including their diversity. While almost three quarters are British, the other quarter of individuals are made up of 170 different nationalities.
Of all licence holders, about 23,000 (that’s roughly 8%) are female. Still a very low level, unfortunately.
We also have about 100 individuals with an SIA licence aged 80 or above.
Bill Butler is chief executive of the Security Industry Authority
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