SIA Indicates – Private Investigator Licensing Back On!

At the Annual General Meeting of the Institute of Professional Investigators on the 21st of October 2011, Dave Humphries, Director of Compliance and Enforcement at the SIA, told the assembled members that licensing for private investigators could be back on the short term agenda for the SIA, if Government Ministers decide that this is wanted.

He said that a couple of options exist, which include individuals being licensed in the shorter term followed by business regulation in the longer term: or wait and have business licensing and individual registration at the same time, the intent with that option to reduce any inconvenience to those licensed. The industry is invited to take a view on the relative costs and benefits of each option and which will work better.

Further consideration is to be given to what organisation would oversee the new regulations, as the SIA does not see itself as the only regulatory option and in any case is expected to change its legal status, perhaps in 2013/14.

The SIA will be consulting about proposals for a new regulatory regime for the private security industry and this is an opportunity to express the preferred position of those in the private investigation sector. A full formal consultation exercise is expected in the first half of 2012.

Almost unanimously, those present indicated that, having waited 10 years for a meaningful PI licensing regime, and having been at the forefront of consultation over the whole process and requirements of licensing, the IPI would be greatly in favour of getting their licences in the short term, delivered by the SIA, particularly because many PIs, as one man bands and SMEs, would likely discover that the registration regulatory requirements would not cause them a great deal of challenge in any case. They also want the SIA to oversee it as the infrastructure already in place could speed up the issuing of their licences.

More information will become available once the fuller implications of this announcement and offer have been considered by the IPI.