How CVRD works, start to finish.

1. Your business. Your business or trading name (we look it up on Companies House as you type, and keep the company number if you choose it), the type of business, your main venue’s address, and roughly how many sites you run.
2. Your key contact. Who we speak to: their name, role, email and phone number, and the best way to reach them for urgent dispatch confirmations.
3. What you need. The licence types you need (door supervision, security guarding, CCTV or close protection), the uniform or presentation you expect, and your usual booking pattern.
4. Review. Check everything, agree to the terms, and you’re done.

We then verify your business, usually within 1 business day, including your Companies House number if you gave one. We email you when you’re verified, and you set a password to sign in.

Your payment card

Add a card on your account page. It’s entered directly with our payment provider, Stripe: we never see or store your full card number, only the brand and last four digits so you can recognise it. Adding a card charges nothing.

Your venues

Your main venue comes from registration. Add more in Settings → Venues, mark any of them as your main one, and pick the right venue each time you request cover.

Then tell us:

• Venue: which of your sites.
• Licence type: door supervision, security guarding, CCTV or close protection.
• Shift length: from half an hour to 24 hours.
• How many operators: up to 10 in one request. Each place is offered to operators separately and no one fills two, so you see each operator by name as they confirm, with their own arrival, check-in and chat. You pay per operator: a hold goes on your card as each one confirms, and any place we can’t fill closes with no charge, with a one-tap way to request the rest. You can drop one operator or cancel the whole team; normal cancellation fees apply to each operator cancelled.
• Anything else we should know: access instructions, dress code, specific certifications. The operator sees these once the job is theirs.

Before you press Request, you see the hourly rate, any short-notice surcharge and the estimated total. That rate is locked in the moment you request.

The surcharge is set by notice alone, never by how busy it is, so it’s a fact you can see coming rather than a price that moves. The rate is everything you pay per hour: holiday pay for the operator comes out of CVRD’s share, never added on for you. Booking several shifts at once with Repeat earns a multi-shift discount, counted per operator (three operators on four dates is 12 shifts), shown on the form before you confirm.

1. Your own operators first. Operators you’ve saved as preferred (Silver and above), an operator you’ve asked for by name (Platinum), or the operator already doing the rest of your series.
2. The best-matched few. For a shift booked ahead, a small group chosen by fit and record.
3. Everyone licensed and in range. For right-now requests, every verified operator with the right licence within 10 miles. For shifts ahead, everyone within the distance they’ve said they’ll travel.
4. Further afield. For shifts ahead, if no one nearby takes it, operators further away.

Every operator in a wave is alerted at once and earlier waves stay open while later ones start. No bidding, no back-and-forth: the first to accept gets it. Members’ requests are offered ahead of others, and higher-tier operators are offered higher-tier members’ requests first.

While it’s out, your booking page shows the search live, including how many operators it has been offered to. Every one of them has had their SIA licence checked against the SIA register, their right to work in the UK and their ID confirmed before they could be offered anything.

Your card

Nothing is charged before an operator confirms. Once one does, we place a hold on your card for the shift. For shifts more than five days away, the hold is placed five days before. A hold reserves the money but isn’t a charge. The charge comes when the shift is complete. When your operator marks it complete, you have 24 hours to confirm it or report a problem. If you do neither, it completes and the charge is taken.

Your booking page updates by itself as things change, so you don’t need to refresh or chase anyone.

When the operator reaches your venue, they check in through CVRD with a photo of themselves holding their SIA licence beside their face, and their phone confirms their location once. The photo appears on your booking straight away, and stays there until you’ve checked it. Once you confirm it, it’s removed from your view.

You can then:

• Confirm it: the face matches the licence and, if you’re there, the person at your door.
• Ask for a new photo with a reason, for example if the face isn’t clear or the licence isn’t visible. After two new photos, sending it back again passes it to us to sort out.
• Tell us it isn’t the person on site. We contact you straight away.

You don’t have to be there, and nothing waits on you: a photo you haven’t checked by the end of the shift is treated as accepted. The arrival time on your booking is the operator’s first check-in. Check-in photos are deleted after 90 days, and we never track an operator’s location at any other time.

If the operator can’t check in, for example their phone has run out of battery, you can confirm their arrival on the booking yourself. Check their face against their SIA licence, then enter the last 4 digits of the licence number. It must match the licence we hold. On a Platinum booking, we check the arrival time before any credit applies.

Once the shift has started, you can mark it complete. Your operator can mark it complete once they’ve checked in and the shift has ended. You then have 24 hours to confirm it or report a problem, and if you do neither it completes on its own. Completing is when your card is charged: the locked-in rate for the hours booked, with no VAT on top. You see the charge on your booking. The operator is paid without sending you an invoice.

Reviews

You rate the operator on punctuality, appearance, job know-how and communication, and they rate the job too. Reviews are private both ways: nobody sees an individual review left about them, only an average once there are at least three.

Saving an operator

From Silver up, save an operator you’d have back from the completed booking. Your saved operators are offered your future shifts first.

Your cancellation window is set by your membership: 24 hours before the shift for Bronze, 12 for Silver, 6 for Gold and 2 for Platinum. Inside it, the operator has turned down other work to hold the slot for you, which is why the fee applies. The cancel screen always tells you whether there’s a charge, and roughly how much, before you confirm.

Right-now bookings start immediately, so they’re always inside the window. That’s why you get five free minutes after confirmation: if the arrival time the operator commits to is too long for you, cancel then at no cost.

Once your operator has arrived, the booking can’t be cancelled. Mark it complete when they’re done, or report a problem if something isn’t right.

Three or more late cancellations within six months leads to a review of the account, whatever the tier.

Membership prices are provisional and will be confirmed at launch. Annual plans cost ten months’ fees for twelve.

The Platinum arrival guarantee

Your operator arrives no more than 10 minutes after the arrival time shown when the booking is confirmed. If they’re later, you don’t pay for the late time, plus a credit of one hourat your rate, taken off that booking automatically when it’s complete. The credit never exceeds the booking. It’s funded by CVRD and never reduces the operator’s pay. It doesn’t apply if the lateness was down to your side (wrong site details, no access) or a major event outside the operator’s control, such as a road closure or severe weather. Ordinary traffic is always covered.

Changing plan

Upgrades take effect straight away, with the difference charged for the rest of the current period. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the period you’ve paid for, and never change bookings already confirmed.

• Give accurate site details and tell us about any known risks, so the operator can work safely and lawfully.
• Make sure someone can receive the operator, and that they can get into the site, at the agreed time.
• Only ask operators to do work within their SIA licence.
• Book operators you’ve met through CVRD through CVRD.

The full rules are in our Client Terms, and how we handle data is in our Privacy Policy.