Northen Security Ltd
Carlisle`s biggest employer of security guards says it is not among the firms caught up in the scandal of illegal immigrant workers. Over the weekend, it was claimed that up to 5000 people not entitled to be in the UK had been granted licences to work as guards by the Security Industry Authority.
The Home Office says the SIA did not check that applicants were in the country legally - and has ordered checks on 40,000 employees already given the go-ahead to work as guards.
The SIA said that it was the duty of employers to check if an applicant was entitled to seek work in the UK. Procedures would now be tightened as it appears that a number of companies had not carried out the necessary checks.
But at Carlisle`s Northern Security Ltd, operations director Paul Heeran said that the firm had always carried out the most stringent vetting procedures on would-be guards. He was confident that none of NSL`s 150-plus officers could have slipped past the company`s rigorous checks.
Over the past year, said Paul, NSL had refused a number of applicants because the firm could not verify that the person was in the country legally and was entitled to be looking for work.
However, he said, it was impossible to confirm whether these people had simply gone off and found jobs with another employer which did not bother to vet applicants properly.
Paul said they could well be among the 5000 illegal immigrants which the Sunday Mirror claimed this weekend were working as security guards, some of them under contract to the Metropolitan Police.
NSL is based in Upperby, Carlisle, and is one of Northern England`s largest guarding companies with many private and public sector clients in Cumbria and beyond.
Paul said the firm supported fully the move by the SIA - which was set up to regulate the security industry - to adopt firmer checking procedures in the future.
"Until now, it has been too easy for some security companies to take short cuts when employing staff, and this has led to the current problem," said Paul.
"We have always made it clear to applicants that they will have to undergo very rigorous vetting before being offered employment, even if they do already hold an SIA licence - and the fact that some have failed these checks proves that they are a highly necessary procedure," he added.
