Security Agents

Licence Check

If you engage a person or company to provide security services, they must be licensed.

Licensed roles
Checking a licence
What a licence looks like
Hiring security for an event

Licensed roles

The following industry roles must be licensed:

• Crowd Control Agent or Crowd Controller - (a) screening entry into those premises or that place (b) monitoring or controlling behavior of person, or otherwise maintaining order, in those premises or that place or (c) removing person from those premises or that place.
  
  
• Security Agent or Security Guard - (a) guards property or (b) keeps property under surveillance. Further, a person employed in a shop for the purposes of preventing or minimising shoplifting is guarding property and keeping property under surveillance.
  
  
• Commercial Agent or Commercial Sub Agent - (a) ascertaining the whereabouts of, or repossessing, a good or chattel that is the subject of a security interest, (b) collecting or requesting the payment of a debt or (c) executing legal process for the enforcement of a judgment or order of a court.
  
  
• Inquiry Agent - (a) obtaining or providing information with respect to- (i) the personal character or action of any person; or (ii) the business or occupation of any person; (b) obtaining evidence for the purpose of legal proceedings or (c) searching for missing persons.
  

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Checking a licence

When a person has been granted a licence, they are issued with an identity card. This card has a photo of the person, states their name, licence number expiry date and what activities they are licensed to undertake.

Ask them to show you their licence. Ensure that they are licensed to perform the work you need them do. Also check that the licence has not expired.

You can also do an online check to confirm that a provider’s licence is valid and current.  

Click here to view Register of licence holders

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What a licence looks like

Example of an Identity Card issued from 1 January 2006 to 23 April 2007.

Example of a Agent Identity Card issued from 23 April 2007.

Example of a Employee Identity Card issued from 23 April 2007.

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Hiring security for an event

EMPLOYEE LICENCE HOLDER: a person who holds an employee licence authorising the undertaking of those activities as part of his or her employment with an agent.

AGENT LICENCE HOLDER: a person who holds an agent licence authorising the undertaking of those activities and employees another person to undertake those activities.

EVENTS: A planned, short-term activity undertaken in a building or structure or covering an area of land. This includes trade shows, general shows or fairs, concerts, sporting events, business or social functions and general public gatherings (e.g. demonstrations).

HOST EMPLOYER: a person or company who engages the services supplied by an agency

When it comes to hiring security / crowd controllers for an event or function, you can not just hire anyone to provide the service.

• they need to have the correct licence activity endorsed on their licence
• not have a condition on their licence that prevents them to work at a event

If a person holds an employee licence, they are responsible to an agent, and you are unable to hire them directly. You should contact a firm that specialises in the work or an agent, whom will contract their staff to your event.

Example of hiring the wrong person:

The club John is a member off was holding a function and need to hire crowd controllers for the night.

John’s friend David said he was security guard and looking for work and his friend Steve was also looking.  John asked David if he wanted the job and then hired him and Steve for the function.

On the night an incident occurred and the police were called in.

After an investigation, David and Steve were both fined $24 000 for working with out a crowd controller license. The club was also fined $24 000 for employing an unlicensed crowd controller.

What did the club fail to do when hiring a crowd controller?

John, on behalf of the club, should have asked to see David and Steve’s licences before hiring them to make they were licensed Agents authorised to undertake the work.

John did not know that David’s licence was only an Employee licence and he was only authorised to do security guard work.

John also did not know that Steve’s licence application had been rejected. Steve had not been able to find security work because he was ineligible for a license.

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