Update on New Licensing System (Industry) 4th November 2016

November 7, 2016

In October we made 9,457 licencing decisions. This is the most we have made in a calendar month since the introduction of the new system. The figure represents a one third increase on the number of decisions we made in September and is in line with the number that we were making before the new system was introduced.

We have now issued over 25,000 licences using the new system.

There are many applications that are still in ‘Next Steps’, the majority of which are awaiting actions from people. ‘Next Steps’ is the part of the process in which an applicant’s details are checked prior to processing, and includes the point at which the applicant, or the business they are linked to, should make payment.

A significant number of applications have outstanding Further Information Requests that require action from people before the application can move forward.

If you have an application in ‘Next Steps’ please make sure that you have completed all the actions contained in the message called “Instructions to complete your SIA Application”. There is a large number of people who have only done some of the actions in this message and these applications will not progress unless all of the actions are completed. The actions might include visiting the post office or sending documents to us.

We have received a very large number of messages from people who have queries about their licence applications. Some of these messages have been superseded by the granting of a licence. We have therefore decided to close any query that has been received before the licence issue date. This allows our teams to concentrate on the questions about applications that have not yet been granted.

If this applies to you, you will receive a message telling you that we have closed your query. If your message was regarding any change of criminality, you must submit this information to us again. If you have any other outstanding query please re-submit this through your online account.
We have made important progress with the new system and it is working much better, but we have not yet reached business as usual. We are sorry if some people have been frustrated by the slowness of the progress of their application. Our teams are working very hard to resolve the issues for the completed applications that have not moved forward and we will continue to do everything we can to support applicants.
More information online:

The SIA website contains guidance on applications