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WSG News
STEWARDS COULD COME UNDER LICENCE UMBRELLA
23 July 2008
In the industry regulation debate, event stewards have been little discussed. They are difficult to categorise - are they event security officers, or crowd controllers? Are they a sub-sector of their own? Despite the mix of safety, customer care and security duties of an event steward and the casual nature of the job that does not lend itself to a licence, the Security Industry Authority is talking to the event security industry and looks like going for licencing. Tens of thousands of people in the UK are event stewards. Given that each Premier League and Football League game must have several hundred stewards to meet stadium safety standards, football stewards alone run into five figures. Are they members of the security industry - or only some of them? The SIA are in talks with the UK Crowd Management Association on this very question - to decide where stewarding stops and security starts. As the UKCMA's name suggests, there is a lack of consensus even among the larger providers of contract staff for events - UKCMA Chairman is Terry Wise- about the definition for stewards. SIA Definitiion
The SIA points to schedule two of the Private Security Industry Act 2001 which covers 'activities liable to control under the Act'. Manned guarding is defined as 'guarding premises against unauthorised access or occupation, against outbreaks of disorder or against damage' and 'guarding property against destruction or damage'. You are not defined as a guard if you only check customers who have paid or have passes, but you are a guard if you are there to 'deter or otherwise discourage' disorder and the other things being guarded against. The SIA is taking the line that stewards are guards and should thus be licenced. As with guarding, in-house operations do not fall within the 2001 Act; only contract guards will be licenced. Summer Spec
By that definition, the 500 stewards recruited by Oxfam for the Leeds and Reading pop festival weekends in August are not carrying out security duties - their job spec being taking tickets at pedestrian gates, checking cars through the vehicle gates, handing out programmes, checking passes and ID in secure areas. However such low paid summer events (there is free entry to the event) are one offs, they do highlight a point that steward work is casual - often by students - and a second income. Contract firms not only often have to take on stewards at short notice but by the hundred. SIA demands for a criminal record check for licence applicants could be an unwelcome overhead for firms. Nor might stewards welcome paying £150.00 plus for a licence, which could be a big slice of their income. The SIA and the industry may come to a compromise whereby the core of event security staff, who would be sent to the scene of any disorder, must have licences: and the mass of casuals, who do lower duty meeting and greeting, need not.
Courtesy of the Professional Security Magazine, August 2003.
