The reputation of those members of club staff known as “bouncers” has taken something of a battering over the years, with people tending to assume that they make a living out of being professionally confrontational and short-tempered. But the term “Door Supervisor”, the correct job title, is presently free of such ugly associations. Though the reputation which bouncers have been given tends to be the result of stories that portray them as being dangerous monsters who derive job satisfaction from the act of punching people, anyone who has real inside experience of the Private Security Industry these days knows this to be almost entirely a thing of the past.
The SIA Training for Door Supervisors exposes exactly how anachronistic the old cliché is in relation to the professionals who work in the clubs of the South Coast. There is no training in how to use a baseball bat. Private security is an extremely serious matter, and anyone with experience at the sharp end realises that the public often view Door Supervisors as being comparable to policemen
A Door Supervisor’s job is to protect the safety of all staff and customers on licensed premises. They are entitled to use their right to refuse entry to patrons who they deem to be a risk, whether because they are visibly too young, too dirtily or revealingly dressed or, from the Supervisor’s point of view, a troublemaker. If they suspect that an individual is carrying an offensive weapon, drugs or any drug paraphernalia, the Supervisor is legally entitled to conduct a search prior to admitting or turning the individual away depending on the search results.
If you hope to work on the doors in the UK your first step is a very simple one – get licensed, and do it without delay. Working in the Security Industry without undergoing and completing the correct SIA training for the security role concerned is a criminal offence, one which could see you behind bars for up to 180 days – or financially a lot poorer. An SIA training course of just four days, a couple of exam passes and a CRB check are all that you need to fight off those risks.
After the doors have been shut to stop anyone else entering, the door supervisor turns to patrolling the premises, scoping out the interior and exterior of the venue for anything untoward, breaking up and preventing violence and dealing with any misbehaving customers in the appropriate manner, which may involve the ejection or in extreme circumstances the arrest of anyone who is considered to pose a threat to other customers.
The SIA training course on Door Supervision, if you should pass the exams, grants you an Integrated Licence that clears you to work as a Security Guard too. Training as a door supervisor is therefore clearly your best option should you wish to seek gainful employment within the leisure and retail sectors of the security industry. The SIA training syllabus for Supervisors covers more modules, of a more challenging nature, than those on the course for Security Guards, yet it does so over the same 30-hour period. It is therefore definitely correct to say that the Door Supervision accreditation is measurably tougher to achieve, but also that the result will amount to a far greater benefit to you in terms of future employability.
The only level of accreditation above that of a Door Supervisor is that of Close Protector (or Bodyguard), but as the SIA training course for a Close Protection licence takes 150 classroom hours and requires you to fund and arrange an independent First Aid qualification it does require a commitment which demands your absolute certainty and genuine belief in your ability to find work as a Close Protector.
SIA Training courses in Portsmouth take place at the Langstone Conference Centre of the University of Portsmouth, a venue which is well served by public transport. The four day course runs for thirty hours in total – twenty-eight of these hours devoted to classroom time during which the syllabus is covered, and two exam hours.
The syllabus is in two units – the “Why” and the “How” units. Unit 1 is centred around the role and responsibility of a qualified Door Supervisor, and will cover such topics as behaviour; drugs; licensing; civil and criminal law and powers of arrest, in addition to best practice when liasing with the emergency services. Other obligatory elements within this part of the SIA training programme include the usual modules on Equal Opportunities and Health and Safety.
The second unit covers Communication Skills and Conflict Management. This is the practical part of the course which oversees the elements of the job that Door Supervisors or “bouncers” are associated with in most people’s eyes, such as breaking up violent confrontations and escorting people from the venue for behaviour which is illegal or contravenes venue drugs policy. In this unit of the course, matters of “how” to do the job of Door Supervisor are covered (the first part being concerned with “why” the job is necessary) and the prospective Supervisor familiarises himself with standards and best practices for conflict resolution.
On successful completion of this SIA training course, the candidate gains their licence and can work as a Door Supervisor – a job where the salary can rise as high as £12 an hour.
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