There is a load of misreporting regarding the SDS - take this from one who knows.

The SDS are a Met unit, initially part of Special Branch latterly SO15. They were always long term NON evidential deployments - that is to say, the cost and effort required to effect the deployment always outweighed the short term tactical advantage that using their product in a court would bring.

The NPIOU have tasking access to SDS assets but control remains with the Met - recently authorities for their actions have been done locally - i.e not by the met but by whatever force they were working in. There has been a move, much resented, for
SDS deployments to be shorter and evidential.

Each SDS officer earns between 80 and 120 hours overtime a month due to the nature of their work - this is a cause of great irritation to other officers particularly recently when money is short.

SDS officers are normally posted to indoor work when they are removed from the field, sometimes with elaborate cover stories about moving abroad - foreign phone numbers often form part of this cover.

I don't know 'flash' but if he was down for 7 years he was at the extreme end of deployment - it wouldn't be unusual for him to have smoked drugs, slept with activists and taken part in minor protests - all this would be authorized. It would be unusual to retire straight out of cover.

Oh and there seems to be a huge fuss about 'targeting' enviro protesters - this has been going on for years - well before the roads protests and was normally achieved by moving assets already embedded into the extreme left. Indeed the public document about the work of Special Branch (Guidelines) specifically mentions this!