Twenty-five years ago, bouncers were usually only found outside the larger nightclubs and dance halls. Today, however, they can be found outside most pubs and clubs in our major towns and cities, and are now even used to protect late-night restaurants, takeaways and shops. Some local-council crime-prevention schemes even use bouncers to patrol town centres and taxi ranks, and there are a couple of schemes that use them to travel on late-night buses to prevent disorder and protect clubbers on their way home.

Thankfully, in most areas, the days when doormen were hired at only the most unruly of pubs and clubs to stop fights, to protect the licensee and to administer their own brand of summary justice to customers who dared to breach the rules of the house are long gone. Professional door supervisors are now considered an essential part of many well-run establishments, ensuring a safer environment in which customers are free to enjoy themselves. Their duties now extend far beyond simply ejecting drunks and preventing disorder, although these elements are still essential to the proper management of any licensed premises. Today’s door supervisors are the eyes and the ears of the licensee, and, as such, are expected to become involved in the many different aspects of running premises designed for entertainment. They are expected to properly welcome customers onto the premises, whilst at the same time enforcing the venue’s entry conditions in a firm but fair manner. Once those customers are inside the premises, door staff are expected to ensure that the evening runs according to everyone’s expectations, at the same time maintaining order and preventing breaches of criminal and licensing laws and house rules. If any of those laws or rules are breached, they need to act within the guidelines of the law and company policy to resolve the situation.

Some door supervisors work for large leisure organisations, some for leisure security companies and others are classed as in-house, meaning that they are hired or employed directly by the licensee of the premises. Some work at pubs or in wine bars, some at clubs and others at restaurants, casinos, amusement arcades and even cinemas. Some door supervisors work part time, some full time and others only occasionally at one-off events. Some of this work is done legitimately with the appropriate tax and national insurance being paid to the treasury; some of it is still done cash in hand and without the proper declaration of earnings.

In 1999, I carried out a nationwide survey on the door supervision sector, interviewing 500 door supervisors. That research showed that 93 per cent of door supervisors were male and covered a fairly wide age range. About 75 per cent of door supervisors at that time classed themselves as ‘white European’, with 49 per cent of them educated to just O Level standard.

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, various forward-thinking local authorities and police forces started their own door-supervisor registration schemes. These schemes enabled them to vet, train and monitor the activities of their local pub and club doormen. These schemes were set up with the intention of:

About 65 per cent of England and Wales was covered by one registration scheme or another by the year 2000, and these schemes were hailed as a great success. Areas that had initiated such schemes saw a reduction in problems on licensed premises, particularly those involving door staff, with police forces all over the UK boasting impressive reductions in relevant crimes in those districts.

As the result of calls from the press, the public and the industry itself, the government decided to regulate the whole of the UK private security industry, and in 2001 the Private Security Industry Act was passed, which allowed the Home Office to form a new independent body to bring about a national licensing system for people and companies in the security sector. As well as issuing licences, that body also became responsible for raising standards of training and professionalism across the industry and to reassure the public by preventing unsuitable people from carrying out security work. That body is called the SIA.

The basic licence-to-practice qualification is run over four days. The SIA does not run training courses, give qualifications or provide funding. Instead, it has endorsed awarding bodies who offer the qualifications linked to SIA licensing, and those awarding bodies approve the training providers. The awarding bodies currently overseeing door supervisor qualifications include NOCN, BIIAB, ASET, City and Guilds, Edexcel and the SQA (in Scotland). Awarding body details can be found on the SIA’s website, as can a list of regionally based training providers. The basic door course costs between £150 and £250, depending on the area and the training provider.

There has been much debate over the last few years as to how well the new national licensing system is working. Some people complain that the licence application process is difficult and takes too long, while others complain that it is too expensive. Many people are disappointed at how the new laws are being enforced, with many questioning why there are still so many unlicensed doormen working in pubs and clubs. Some leisure security companies complain that there are not enough decent, experienced doormen available to fulfil their contracts. Others say that the industry is being overtaken by inexperienced ‘jacket fillers’ who simply can’t do the job properly.

Andy Walker, a former police officer, has nearly 20 years’ experience in the world of door supervision. In 1990, whilst a ‘moonlighting’ policeman, Andy worked the doors in London’s Notting Hill. At the same time, he started London’s first police-run door-supervisors registration scheme. He was invited to help write the first set of national occupational standards for the sector and trained hundreds of doormen for various schemes in and around London.