The UK’s private security regulator has filled barely a quarter of the staff it needs to enforce new a anti-terror security law, even as its existing licensing operation buckles under rising backlogs, longer processing times, and a complaint uphold rate approaching 50%.
Martyn’s Law will require premises and events to assess terrorism risks and put protective measures in place, with the SIA acting as regulator for the new regime. The government has not yet confirmed a commencement date but has said there will be an implementation period of at least 24 months, from 3 April 2025, before the Act comes into force. Significant extra work will have to be done by businesses according to how many people they host…
Documents uncovered by Guido’s FOI Unit show that the Security Industry Authority has created 183 posts for it’s Martyn’s Law function but has so far only filled 45. Only three positions are currently advertised, and three more are at sift/interview stage. 132 roles haven’t even been posted yet…
The two biggest operational teams are also mostly empty. Inspections and Enforcement has 44 planned posts but has hired one person. Notifications and Assessment Casework – the team that will actually process cases under the new regime – has 43 posts and has also hired one. Total recruitment spend to date has been £85,000…
The SIA insists there is no risk to delivery and recruitment is staggered over five years. Its own performance data shows that average application processing times hit 19 working days in Q1 2026-27 which is the highest since records in this dataset began in 2022. Monthly complaints about processing delays, which had fallen to around 10 per month in mid-2025, jumped back to 20 in January and February 2026. The backlog of applications in progress climbed to 16,725 in March 2026, up from around 12,950 three months earlier…
The SIA’s own annual complaints board paper shows the complaint uphold rate rose from 40% in 2023-24 to 49% in 2024-25, meaning the regulator was at fault in almost half of all complaints. Upheld complaints against several internal teams have also surged year-on-year which the SIA says “warrants further investigation.” The regulator has been trying to procure quality monitoring software to help identify the causes of errors. This was first flagged in 2023-24 and is still not operational. The latest report says they are “looking at our options”…
A quango that is struggling to process its current workload without rising delays and a near-50% error rate is gearing up to process a huge number of applications from businesses in a year with three-quarters of the requisite posts not even advertised. What could go wrong?
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”