What picture do you get in your mind when someone talks about a bouncer? A squat, angry man with a lot of tattoos and a string of convictions for GBH? Well, for many people the answer to that question is a wholly prejudice “Yes”. But the term “Door Supervisor”, the correct technical job title, does not yet have such associations. Though mythology around front-line security personnel is filled with apocryphal stories which imagine the “bouncer” as being a psychopathic individual who is certain to enjoy getting paid to do what he’d happily do for free – hitting people. Anyone who has any experience of the Security Industry these days, however, knows this is assuredly not the case now – whatever the truth is about the past.
The SIA training for Door Supervisor positions shows exactly how absurd the old stories are in relation to the Door Supervisors who work in the drinking dens of the North-West. There are no classes on how to dislocate a shoulder and nothing at all about pushing a troublesome individual down a flight of stairs. Private security is a very serious business, and anyone has made it their job realises that the rules are there for a reason.
Rule number one for a potential Door Supervisor in the UK is simple – get licensed, and do it as soon as possible. Working without an SIA Licence for a Security professional is a criminal offence, and could see you end up behind bars – or much lighter in the pocket at the very least. An SIA training course lasting just four days, a couple of passes in the exams and a positive result are all you need to remove those risks.
A Door Supervisor’s responsibility is to protect the safety of venue staff and customers in a pub, club or bar. They have the right to refuse to let in anyone who they deem to be unsuitable, whether this be because they are not legally allowed in, unsuitably dressed or, in the Supervisor’s view, a probable troublemaker. Should the Door Supervisor have reason to suspect that someone is carrying a weapon, drugs or drug paraphernalia, they are fully entitled to search them prior to admitting or turning them away. After the doors have closed to prevent anyone else entering, the supervisor’s role becomes more of a roaming brief and they patrol the inside and outside of the venue watching out for any illegal behaviour, preventing violence and dealing with transgressions in the prescribed fashion, including the ejection r even arrest of anyone who is believed to be likely to cause harm to other customers.
The SIA Training course for Door Supervisors, if you pass the exams, grants you an Integrated Licence that entitles you to work as a Security Guard as well. Training as a door supervisor is therefore certainly your best option should you wish to work within the leisure or retail sectors of the security industry. The syllabus covers more topics, of a more varied nature than those on the course for Security Guards over the same 30-hour period. It is therefore definitely arguable that the course is measurably tougher, but the resulting reward – a more comprehensive Integrated Licence – will be of far greater benefit to you in terms of employability.
The only level of accreditation further up than Door Supervision is Close Protectors (or Bodyguarding), but as the SIA training course for that takes 150 classroom hours and requires you to pay for and sit an independent First Aid qualification it is a commitment which demands absolute certainty and genuine confidence in your ability to find a Close Protector job.
SIA Training courses in Manchester take place at the Britannia Sachas Hotel on New Street, within easy reach of public transport. The course runs for 4 days at a total of thirty hours. 28 of these hours are teaching time where the syllabus is studied, and two are exam hours.
The syllabus is in two units. Unit 1 concerns itself with the role and duties of a Door Supervisor, ad covers topics such as standards of behaviour; venue drug policy; licensing law; civil and criminal law; searching customers and premises and powers of arrest, as well as how to liase with emergency services. There are a few other compulsory elements within this unit of the SIA training programme, including modules regarding Equal Opportunities and Health and Safety.
The second unit of the course covers the topics of Communication Skills and Conflict Management. This is the section of the course dealing with the elements of the job that a Door Supervisor or “bouncer” is commonly known for, such as preventing fights or removing people from the venue for breaking the law or venue policy. In this part of the course, the matters of how one does the job are covered (the first part being concerned with why) and the Door Supervisor learns the best practice for resolving conflicts.
On successful completion of this SIA training course, the candidate will gain their licence to work as a Door Supervisor – results are posted online at a date specified by the examiner.
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