Training companies are helping security workers to fraudulently gain work licences, potentially endangering themselves and others, a BBC investigation has found.
An undercover reporter for the broadcaster’s File on 4 programme gained access to a mandatory course required by the industry regulator, and was allowed to complete the six-day course in just a day and a half.
On one course the reporter was told to fill in timesheets for six days and was given answers to the exam.
File on 4 approached 12 companies offering the Level 2 Security Industry Authority (SIA) door supervisor courses for between £200 and £300. Four of the companies offered shortened courses, which is against SIA regulations.
The investigation found that a reporter and other candidates on one of the courses sat a final exam for the qualification, but were not given any questions. Instead, they were given an answer sheet to multiple choice questions and told which options to circle.
Screening employees
If candidates complete the six-day course, the SIA can grant them the licence they need to work as doormen or women in arenas, nightclubs and other venues, providing they also pass identity and criminal record checks.
An inquiry into the events surrounding the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 found that, if security staff had received proper training, it would have made a “decisive difference” to the response to the attack.
The inquiry recommended more comprehensive training of all security staff, but Paul Greaney KC, legal counsel to the inquiry, said the BBC’s latest investigations had uncovered “the complete opposite of that situation”.
This follows an earlier investigation which found that security staff working the doors at the O2 Brixton Academy in London had been accepting bribes to let fans in without tickets. A crush at the venue resulted in the death of two people in December 2022.
The SIA did not respond directly to the BBC’s allegations but said it would assess the evidence. Where individuals’ qualifications were unsafe, they would be suspended, it said.
The SIA added that it would also work with qualifications regulator Ofqual to ensure the content of the qualifications is investigated.
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