Monitoring News
Every month our Managing Director, Steve Kimber, fills us in on the latest monitoring news.
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Below is an archive of the previous year's monthly columns or click here for earlier news columns.
| March 12 | February 12 | January 12 |
| December 11 | November 11 | October 11 |
| September 11 | August 11 | July 11 |
| June 11 | May 11 | April 11 |
Connections
March 2011
Hello again,
With the ongoing deliberations of what to do with the Security Industry Authority (SIA) it appears The Security Alliance, an organisation purporting to be representative of the security industry, has some proposed principles for the review of regulation.
This body which is heavily driven by the manned guarding sector of the BSIA and chaired by the BSIA CEO considers that the regulatory function should continue to encompass the licensing of individuals, compliance and enforcement and should be expanded to include business registration.
The expansion of business registration i.e. licensing of companies is fine provided it only applies to manned guarding companies. The electronic security industry has had 40 years of self imposed regulation by UKAS accredited inspectorate bodies and as such Designers, Installers, Maintainers and Monitoring personnel pose no threat to the public with regard their competence or their credentials as both aspects are independently inspected by the NSI or SSAIB. Furthermore as the industry, due to the nature of its work, also sits within the footprint of the building services engineering sector, it is already subject to extensive regulatory controls and standardisation.
Moreover, if as it appears regulation might come away from the Home Office control and put back into the Industry to determine who and what should be licensable it is not for the manned guarding sector to have the remit to determine if electronic security companies should be licensed.
In February's edition of Risk UK (page 8), Mike Cahalane writes about the fact that RVRC operators should be given an exemption from the double whammy of SIA licensing when the company is already subject to the equivalent regulation found suitable for the SIA ACS scheme.
For sure the restructuring of the SIA will result in the continuation of the Fire and Security Association lobbying for RVRC operators to be taken out of licensing and that licensing of the electronic security industry is definitely not on the agenda. I just hope that the BSIA Security Systems Section, which I once chaired, is as equally robust in its defence of our industry against disproportionate over-regulation.
Bye for now,
Steve
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