Security-trained driving, explained plainly. What the phrase covers, and what it does not.

When a client asks for a security-trained driver, they usually have one of four quite different things in mind. Sometimes it is a driver who has been taught to handle a car properly at speed and under stress. Sometimes it is a driver who does the planning work before a journey rather than following a satellite navigation screen. Sometimes it is a licensed close protection operative who happens to be behind the wheel. And sometimes, in truth, it is simply a wish to be looked after well by somebody discreet.

Those four things sit at very different points on a scale, they cost very different amounts, and only one of them is a regulated activity in the United Kingdom. Because the phrase is unregulated as marketing, anybody may use it, and a great many transport companies do. The purpose of this guide is to let you tell the difference, whoever you end up appointing.

We write it as a chauffeur company. Odyssey owns and runs its own cars and employs its chauffeurs in London and Manchester, and elsewhere cars are arranged through operators we know. What follows is an explanation of the discipline in general terms, not a claim about any particular person's qualifications.

In Britain the private security industry is regulated by the Security Industry Authority, which issues licences to individuals for defined activities. The front line categories are close protection, door supervision, security guarding, public space surveillance using cameras, and cash and valuables in transit, with a separate key holding licence and a non front line licence for managers and directors. Each front line licence is tied to a qualification and to identity and criminal record checks on the individual.

The point that matters for transport is this: there is no licence category for driving. A close protection licence is about guarding a person against physical assault or injury. It is not a driving qualification, it does not certify anybody's ability behind the wheel, and it is not required to drive a client anywhere. Equally, no amount of advanced driver training confers a security licence or any authority that goes with one.

So if a company tells you its drivers are licensed by the Authority, the useful follow-up is a narrow one: licensed in which category, held by which individuals, and to do what on this journey. A licence held by a manager somewhere in the business tells you nothing about the person who will collect you on Tuesday. See security and discretion for how we answer questions of this kind, and duty of care in ground transport for the wider set.

If a genuine threat exists, the right order of events is not to look for a driver. It is to commission a threat assessment from a security adviser, let that assessment set out what is proportionate, and then fit the transport to it. A protection team that arrives after the transport has been arranged usually has to undo the arrangements, which is expensive and slow.

When a client does travel with a protection team, the working relationship is straightforward and worth stating. The team leads. Routes, arrival points, timings and any change on the day are their call, and the transport provider takes instruction, drives, and keeps to the plan. Our chauffeurs are used to working that way alongside the security teams our clients already use, for example on the movements described on our security firms and diplomatic pages.

For everybody else, and that is most people, the honest answer is that a discreet, experienced chauffeur who plans properly and says nothing afterwards solves the thing the client is actually worried about. Privacy, predictability and not standing about in public are what most people mean when they ask for security. See our chauffeurs for how we think about that, and corporate chauffeur service or executive roadshows for the day to day shape of it.