Following on from attending the Security Industry Authority conference, Alarm Response and Keyholding Ltd wanted to post the key points that were taken from the day:

The SIA are having a Tri-Annual review in 4 weeks time to establish if there is still a need for regulation
Results of this review will be published in March 2016 which should determine the way forward
If business licensing is chosen as the way forwards the earliest that it would be introduced would be 2018/2019
Business licensing is not something that we need to worry about any time soon.
There’s currently 805 companies with the SIA that hold Approved Contractor Status, and another estimated 3000 companies that are providing security services with no form of regulation.
The British Standards for CCTV will be changing soon, BS7958, keep an eye out for the changes.

This for ARK is disappointing news as it seems that the rogue traders within the Manned Guarding industry will have at least another 4 – 5 years to further drive down both standards and pricing.

The conference that we attended was poorly supported, as were the other events that were put on by the SIA in other parts of the country. The SIA need to consider how they can give added value to the existing members in order to re-engage with its stakeholders.