An alarming viewpoint!

SIR – I REFER TO THE COMMENTS MADE BY Southern Monitoring Services' managing director Steve Kimber in The Big Issue section of Security Viewpoint (SMT, April 2003, p19).

To begin with, I really don't recognise Steve's description of the British Standards Institution's (BSI) GW/1 as reported. He claims to speak for both BSIA and the National Security Inspectorate (NSI) installers regarding "GW/1 upholding the CENELEC date of withdrawal of conflicting national standards, and introducing EN 50131-1".

Steve may well speak for the 108 or so installers within the BSIA, but he cannot make the same claim for the 560 or so non-BSIA NSI installers, nor the 1244 or so Security Systems and Alarms Inspection Board installers.

Steve was present at the GW/1 meeting to which he refers, and he knows only too well the BSIA has accepted that the CENELEC date of withdrawal decision is seen by them to mean 'the withdrawal of national standards'. So much so that they haven't registered by letter or proposition of complaint that the GW/1 chairman ruled at the meeting held on 3 December last that there was no consensus for objecting to the CENELEC decision.

This in spite of the fact that strong views expressed at the same GW/1 meeting that the date of withdrawal should have applied to prEN 50131-1: xxxx when it's published, rather than BS EN 50131-1:1997.

Far from upholding the CENELEC decision, GW/1 briefed the BSI's UK delegate to the March 2003 meeting of CENELEC BT to raise objections to the date of withdrawal.

Steve also knows that the BSI's UK delegate chose not to raise the objections he was briefed to put to CENELEC BT. What will the BSIA do about that?

It's also quite misleading of Steve to infer that EN 50131-1 is about to be introduced. Steve will know – as well he ought – that BS EN 50131-1:1997 was introduced five years ago and still cannot be used in all grades, while prEN 50131-1:xxxx will hardly be with us before March 2005. SMT's readers would do well to refer to NSI chief executive Tom Mullarkey's extremely well crafted comments in the same edition ('We must protect The Ring', SMT, April 2003, p56).

In which case, accepting the date of withdrawal by CENELEC as meaning the withdrawal of BS 4737 is exactly the position accepted by the BSIA – and Steve – when he attended that same GW/1 meeting.

My own views on the date of withdrawal are well known. I don't agree that it means the withdrawal of BS 4737, and indeed have said so at GW/1 and in the pages of this Journal ('Withdrawing BS 4737 is wrong', SMT, April 2003, p11).

No matter how many times Steve tries to present his 'facts', he knows that the BSIA has acquiesced in any decisions made by GW/1.