Detector-operated CCTV code is 'biased and not representative' claims Imigix MD
The BSIA's CCTV section has come under fire for exceeding its remit in presenting the British Standards Institution with a code of practice for detector-operated CCTV installations which is not representative of the whole of the CCTV industry.

Richard Morgan, managing director of Imigix, which manufactures video transmission equipment, says the code has been drafted using the capabilities of equipment which conforms to the 'lowest common denominator' in the industry. He told SMT: "The BSIA has allowed itself to be used to promote self-interested, partisan views in preparing this Code. It has been presented to the BSI as a 'representative document'. The BSIA should only do that if they had consulted the major central stations and manufacturers of video transmission equipment. However, nobody has spoken to us about it. Our views have not been asked for. The BSIA has gone way beyond its brief in representing the CCTV industry."

The BSIA's code of practice was initially drafted in April this year following a pilot scheme involving West Midlands Police which issued URNs for sites monitored by RemGuard, TNT Security Services and Cougar Monitoring. At the time, it was hailed as a huge step forward for the industry.

However, Morgan continued: "The point is that the industry desperately needs standards, but that should be d one inclusively."

Insufficient consultation

Steve Nelson, operations director of Visual Verification, concurs. He told SMT: "The code has been developed from a commercial in-house document, through the BSIA's approval who have pushed it to the BSI. The consultation process has not been wide enough. There is not much change from the original document to the one that has been pushed through. The BSIA CCTV commmittee should have looked at all the transmission systems available on the market. Even the likes of Adpro, who are one of the major players in the market and would have good opinions on a workable standard, have not been consulted."

According to Morgan most of the major players in the video-transmission field are not BSIA members. He added that the BSIA should have made clear to the BSI that the document reflected its own member base and not the views of the whole of the CCTV industry.

"How can the CCTV industry hope to grow and be taken seriously if we allow [ourselves] to be hijacked in this way?" he said.

Wider availability

John Finney, BSIA technical manager, said: "No standard is or ever will be perfect but we feel the BSIA acted in a positive manner in enabling a working document to be made available to the industry at an appropriate time. The BSIA obtained information from a number of its member companies involved in monitoring detector activated CCTV systems and subsequently compiled a code of practice for the technology. However, because this technology is fairly new, the BSIA wanted to make the code of practice available to a wider audience."The BSI has a procedure for doing so, which is to publish a PAS (Publicly Available Specification). The BSIA therefore tabled their code of practice with BSI requesting it to be developed as a PAS. The paper was circulated by BSI to their CCTV technical committee for comments. Of the 170 comments received over 75% were accepted, a far higher percentage than is normally accepted.

"BSIA then re-submitted the re-drafted document to BSI. It must be stressed that at this point the code became the property of the BSI. The document is now in the public domain and any member of the public or security company may submit comments to the BSI."

Source

SMT