What is an SIA licence?
An SIA licence is the authorisation an individual needs from the Security Industry Authority to carry out licensable security activity in the UK. Working without one where required is a criminal offence.
Use this diagram
Free to use on your own site, in training material or in a handout, as long as the credit link stays on it. Paste this where you want the diagram to appear.
<figure>
<img src="https://secureoptix.co.uk/glossary/sia-licence/diagram.svg" alt="SIA licence — diagram from SecureOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
<figcaption>
<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk/glossary/sia-licence">What is an SIA licence?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://secureoptix.co.uk">SecureOptix</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>Licences are issued by activity rather than by job title. What decides whether a licence is needed, and which one, is what the person actually does — which is why a role described as a concierge or a steward may still be licensable.
The offence runs both ways. An individual working unlicensed commits one, and a business supplying unlicensed operatives commits another, so verification is a business risk rather than an HR formality.
Licences expire and can be suspended or revoked between renewals. Checking at recruitment and not afterwards leaves a firm confident about a position that may have changed months ago.
In practice
A construction site gate, first morning of a new contract.
The officer produces a card, the site manager glances at the photograph and waves him through. The card is genuine and current. It is also a security guarding licence, and the contract he has been put on includes checking bags at the compound entrance — which is a different activity under a different licence.
Nobody notices for five weeks, because a spreadsheet tracking expiry dates has nothing in it about sector. The expiry column is green.
A licence authorises specified activity, not security work in general. Deploying somebody on work their licence does not cover is the same exposure as deploying them with no licence at all, and it is invisible to any tracker that only watches dates.
What goes wrong in practice
- Checked at onboarding and never rechecked, so a lapse or revocation goes unnoticed.
- A role assumed non-licensable because of its title rather than its activities.
- Licence numbers recorded from a photograph of a card rather than verified against the register.
- Renewal dates held by the officer rather than by the firm deploying them.