FOI release

SIA door supervisor applications and revocations since 2017

Updated 11 May 2023

1. Request

1. How many door supervisor applications have you received each year since 2017?
2. How many door supervisor licences have you revoked in each year since 2017 where the individual had a previous criminal conviction?
3. What are the 4 most common reasons for door supervisor licence revocation?

2. Response

I can confirm that we do hold this information.

2.1 ICT strategy plan

I can confirm that the SIA holds the information in respect of questions 1 and 2. However, in respect of question 3 this e-mail constitutes a notice of refusal to comply with your request for the reason explained in the bottom of this email.

2.2 Door supervisor applications since 2017

I can confirm that the SIA holds this information. From January 2017 to March 2019, this information is provided in the spreadsheet attached. The information in the remaining part of the timeframe you have requested is publicly available online. You can view it here: SIA licence applications.

2.3 Door supervisor licences revoked since 2017

I can confirm that the SIA holds this information. Please see the attached spreadsheet.

Please note that the SIA has interpreted this question as meaning “how many door supervisor licences have you refused each year since 2017 where the individual had previous criminal convictions?” as opposed to revoke. This is because the SIA does not revoke licences for previous criminal convictions. For previous criminal convictions, the SIA would refuse a licence. The SIA would revoke a licence for a new criminal conviction that an individual has received during the lifetime of their licence.

2.4 Reasons for door supervisor licence revocation

I can confirm that the SIA does hold this information, however this email constitutes a refusal to deal with your request for the reason set out below.

Section 12(1) – (4) of the Freedom of Information Act allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to comply with the request in its entirety or to confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. In the case of a public authority such as the SIA, the appropriate cost limit is £450.

The ICO guidance ‘The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004’ sets out how a public authority should estimate whether the work required to obtain information is reasonable and appropriate. In the case of requests that would require work on the part of public authority staff, this is estimated at a rate of £25 per person per hour. This means that 18 hours is considered the appropriate limit.

Reporting limitations within the database where this information is held means that the relevant information cannot instantly be isolated and retrieved. Each revocation case would need to be manually interrogated and to consider revocation cases over the six year period requested would significantly exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours and appropriate cost limit of £450. This means that in order to facilitate your request for information, the SIA would need to manually go through each revocation case since 2017 and as reporting limitations do not enable us to narrow down the search to accommodate this request, it would take an increased period of time.

It has been estimated that on average it would take approximately 15 minutes to interrogate each revocation case we have had since 2017. As you can see from the volume of revocation case statistics below, there are several hundreds of revocation cases, each month, which means that to interrogate each case to find the reason why the licence was revoked would significantly exceed the appropriate cost limit.

What information can we provide?

The SIA can advise generally what the most common reasons for revoking a licence are:

• Convictions, cautions, community resolutions, conditional/absolute discharges and admonishments for any type of offence in Get Licensed.
• Unsafe Physical Intervention while deployed as a Door Supervisor that is not consistent with SIA licence-linked training.
• Right to work having expired prior to the end of the licence holder’s 3-year licence.

Yearly revocation volumes are publicly available, and you can view them here: SIA door supervisor and security guarding statistics since 2017.

Next steps

In order to facilitate your request, I suggest that you limit the scope of your request and we can manually search each revocation case until the appropriate cost limit is reached. Given that it is a very time intensive exercise to manually look at each revocation case I would ask that you limit your search to a particular month, within the period that you are interested in and perhaps within a certain geographical area.

The SIA will search as many revocation cases up to the appropriate cost limit within this reduced timeframe. If we are able to search the logs well within the appropriate cost limit we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of a further month that you would like to be searched.

I would be grateful if you could confirm your position in respect of this FOIA request and whether you would like assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.

[Reference: FOI 0401]