Your SIA licence renewal starts four months before the expiry date printed on your card, not four weeks. Three things have to be in place before the application form opens: an in-date first aid certificate, a completed refresher qualification, and both ACT e-learning certificates. Miss any one and the SIA rejects the application.
The fee is £204. Same as a first-time application, and just as non-refundable.
The four-month window and why early wins
The SIA accepts renewal applications up to four months before your licence expires, and the regulator recommends submitting at least six to eight weeks out. Renewing early costs you nothing in licence time, because any remaining months on the old badge get added to the new one. So there is no argument for waiting.
There is one protection worth knowing about. Submit before your expiry date, and you can keep working in the same role while the SIA processes the application, even if that processing runs past the date on your card. Leave the submission until after expiry and that protection disappears. You stop working.
Refresher training replaced the old top-up
Door supervisor renewals have required refresher training since 1 April 2025. This replaced the top-up course that had covered renewals from October 2021, and the two are not interchangeable. Anyone booking a course described as “top-up” in 2026 is booking the wrong thing.
The refresher runs 1.5 to 2.5 days in person for door supervisors. Content covers updated legislation, counter-terrorism awareness, conflict management, and a practical physical intervention element. Anyone renewing an SIA badge after three years on static or corporate sites tends to get caught out by the physical unit, because the techniques have moved on and unused skills fade.
Your first aid certificate has to outlive the training
Here is the requirement that trips up more renewals than anything else. Your Emergency First Aid at Work certificate must have at least 12 months of validity remaining on the day your refresher course starts. Not on the day you apply. On the day training begins.
EFAW certificates run three years. Do the arithmetic and you find that a first aid certificate taken alongside your original licence expires at almost exactly the wrong moment, leaving under 12 months when refresher time comes around. Most people renewing in 2026 need a fresh EFAW before they can even book the refresher.
Check the date on your certificate now. It takes ten seconds and saves a fortnight.
The two free certificates people forget
Renewals also require ACT Awareness and ACT Security e-learning, both completed within the previous 12 months. Both are free through ProtectUK. Neither takes long, though the SIA does check for them, and an application submitted without both gets held rather than processed.
Print the certificates or save the PDFs somewhere you can find them. Providers ask for the same evidence before enrolling you on a refresher.
Your renewal sequence, in order
- Check your expiry date on your card or SIA online account
- Check your EFAW certificate has 12 months left from your intended course start date
- Book EFAW again if it does not
- Complete ACT Awareness and ACT Security e-learning
- Book and complete your door supervisor refresher
- Apply through your SIA online account and pay the £204
Running these out of order is what produces the emails we see every autumn from officers whose badge expired last Tuesday and whose employer has taken them off the rota. The training is straightforward. The sequencing is what people get wrong.
What a lapsed licence actually costs
An expired badge stops you working immediately in any licensable role. Working without one carries a fine of up to £5,000 and a criminal record, so employers will not risk keeping you on shift while you sort it out.
The financial hit lands harder than the fee. A door supervisor on the south coast earning between £14 and £16 an hour, working four shifts a week, loses roughly £600 a week while a rejected application gets resubmitted. Add the six weeks a re-run application can take and the cost of leaving it late runs into thousands.
My Badge schedules its SIA Door Supervisor Refresher Course with EFAW available alongside it, which matters for the large share of renewing officers whose first aid certificate has slipped under the 12-month mark. Book the refresher first, then apply. That order is the whole trick.
