The SIA is consulting on significant changes to licence-linked qualifications and the training that existing licence holders may be required to undertake in future.
This matters whether you hold a Door Supervisor, Security Guarding, CCTV or Close Protection licence.
Protocol 9 supports high standards. We support good training. We support keeping safety-critical skills current.
What we do not support is an assumption that attending another paid course is automatically the only way an experienced professional can demonstrate competence.
Ian Cousins
PROTOCOL 9
The SIA proposes continuing refresher training for safety-critical skills that may fade and using top-up training when specifications change.
Competence — not just attendance
Many people in this industry have spent years — sometimes decades — developing their skills.
A course can teach a procedure.
Experience teaches you when, why and whether to use it.
Situational awareness, judgement, communication, recognising developing risk, de-escalation and knowing when not to intervene are developed through training and experience.
We don't object to maintaining competence.
We question whether compulsory course attendance should always be the only way of proving it.
What's the difference?
There is an important distinction between:
New entrant training — establishing that someone has the knowledge and skills necessary to enter the industry.
Top-up training — teaching genuinely new knowledge or skills introduced since someone qualified.
Refresher training — refreshing safety-critical skills that may genuinely have deteriorated.
Repeating training — requiring someone to undertake material they can already demonstrate they know and can perform competently.
Those things should not automatically be treated as the same.
The SIA itself says some skills, including physical intervention and searching, can fade if they are not properly and regularly used.
That's reasonable.
But it doesn't follow that every licence holder has lost competence simply because three years have passed.
Recognition of prior learning
Protocol 9 believes the future system should provide meaningful recognition for:
existing relevant qualifications • current certificates • recognised CPD • recent operational experience • demonstrable competence
Where a licence holder can demonstrate the required standard, that evidence should be considered before compulsory retraining is imposed.
This isn't about lowering the standard.
It's about providing more than one legitimate way of demonstrating that the standard has been met.
The cost matters too
Training isn't free.
There is the course fee, travel and potentially accommodation — but for many frontline operatives the largest hidden cost is losing a day's earnings while attending compulsory training.
The SIA itself recognises this principle elsewhere in the consultation. For example, it says adding PI to every Security Guard qualification would increase training from roughly four to six days and acknowledges the resulting additional time and training costs.
Proportionality therefore matters for existing licence holders too.
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Our position
Maintain high standards.
Update people when legislation, risks or recognised practice genuinely changes.
Our position
Refresh practical safety-critical skills where there is evidence of skills fade.
Recognise existing qualifications, CPD and operational competence.
Our position
Don't require somebody to purchase substantially the same training again when they can already demonstrate the required competence.
And above all:
Mandatory competence? Yes.
Mandatory repetition? No.