Test a police vetting demand against the national police vetting standard
Police forces are writing to council CCTV services requiring their operators to hold a higher level of police vetting, usually NPPV Level 2 Full. NPPV stands for Non-Police Personnel Vetting, the clearance a police force gives to people who are not police staff. It runs from Level 1, through Level 2 Abbreviated and Level 2 Full, up to Level 3.
Free for CCTV User Group members. £250 to unlock your letter and summary if you are not a member. See a sample output
Who this is for
Local authorities running their own public space CCTV control rooms, and the private companies that run council control rooms under contract. This first release does not cover alarm receiving centres, monitoring centres, engineers or suppliers. Those versions are coming, and the User Group would still like to hear from you in the meantime.
What the toolkit does
This toolkit takes you through the Airwave Vetting Protocol, the CCTV User Group's own guidance on how to answer a demand like this. You do not need to have read it. It tests the demand against the five questions the Protocol asks about any demand:
- 1what the national guidance actually says
- 2whether the police force's reasons fit your control room
- 3whether the level it wants is evidenced
- 4what screening your operators already hold
- 5what the police force's own written procedure says
It then produces a reply that asks the police force three things:
- how it has classified the Airwave radio and who decided that
- a copy of the risk assessment behind the demand
- the reasoning that connects the two to your operators
It takes about fifteen minutes. You apply for access first. Once approved, your answers and results are kept for 36 months so you can come back to them.
What you get
A police vetting demand letter analysis together with a proposed position summary that you can put in front of a director or a Council committee.
A tailored clarification letter, provided as an editable Word document and ready to put on your own organisation's letterhead. The letter does not refuse or reject the police force's vetting demand; instead, it formally asks the police force to set out in full the reasoning and the supporting evidence its demand for a higher level of vetting is based on.
The full evidence checklist, provided as a downloadable PDF document, so that you and your team can work through every item on it before you send your formal reply to the police force.
See the evidence checklistAn emailed copy of both the clarification letter and the position summary, sent to you automatically once they have been unlocked for your organisation.
Key terms
- A vetting level.
- Police forces clear non-police staff to a level of Non-Police Personnel Vetting, or NPPV. Level 1 is the lightest. Level 2 Abbreviated allows regular unescorted access to non-sensitive police premises and to police information up to official-sensitive. Level 2 Full adds unsupervised access to police computer systems. Level 3 is higher again. Most disputes turn on the single step from Level 2 Abbreviated to Level 2 Full.
- A talk group.
- A radio channel on the Airwave network.
- TEA2.
- TEA2 stands for TETRA Encryption Algorithm 2. TETRA is the digital radio standard the Airwave network runs on. An organisation needs an Ofcom-approved TEA2 licence to use an Airwave radio.
- BS 7858:2019.
- The British Standard for screening people who work in secure environments.
- BS 7958:2015.
- The British Standard for running a CCTV control room.
- SIRO.
- A Senior Information Risk Owner, the officer in a police force who is accountable for information risk.
- Airwave sharer.
- An organisation outside the emergency services that Ofcom has approved to use Airwave, listed on the Airwave sharers list. Councils running CCTV control rooms are the usual example. Sharer status stays with the council even when a contractor runs the room. Being a sharer needs a TEA2 licence and a non-disclosure agreement with the police force. The radio is usually what prompts a vetting demand, but the sharer conditions themselves do not set a vetting level; that is a local police force decision.
- Common cipher key (CCK).
- The shared encryption setting that protects the talk groups a sharer is allowed to receive. Sharing is limited to talk groups protected by it, and those talk groups must not carry routine police traffic or primary dispatch.
How it works
- 1
Apply for access
Free for CCTV User Group members.
Tell us who you are and confirm your work email. The CCTV User Group approves the application and emails you a single-use access code.
- 2
Tell us who you are
A council running its own control room, or a contractor running one under contract.
- 3
Gather the evidence
A short version of the evidence checklist at Annex B of the Airwave Vetting Protocol. Every question accepts do not know.
- Optional4
Describe your control centre
Optional. It helps the User Group build a national picture and it never affects your result.
- 5
Record the police force's position
Which police force, what level it has asked for and the reason its letter gives for asking.
- 6
Read the five tests
Five questions the Protocol asks of any demand, answered against the facts you have given, each with a sentence saying why.
- 7
Take your outputs away
The evidence checklist is free once your application is approved. The letter and the position summary are free for members; everyone else pays £250 once to unlock them.
Help build the national vetting register
Every assessment can contribute an anonymised entry: your police force, what it asked for and the reason it gave. The User Group reviews each entry before it is published, and a police force with fewer than two reports shows no numbers at all, so no single organisation can be identified. Be one of the first to add yours.
Help build the vetting registerTest the police vetting demand against the Airwave Vetting Protocol, written for council control rooms
Before you rely on this
This is not legal advice. It is the police force's own risk assessment that decides which vetting level applies to your service. The toolkit sets out the questions the Airwave Vetting Protocol says to ask and the evidence to gather. It does not decide the vetting level that applies to your service, and it is not a substitute for your own legal advice or your own risk assessment.