London’s false alarm costs drop by £16.5 million over five years

The Metropolitan Police Service claims that the cost of attending false alarms generated by London’s monitored systems has dropped dramatically over the five years it has been running the Alarm Performance Awards. The estimated ‘price drop’ is £16.5 million across the 1,100 monitoring companies.

“The ever-improving performance of monitoring companies means that fewer false alarms demanding a police presence are being generated, freeing up police officers to attend true alarms and incidents,” commented deputy assistant commissioner Ron McPherson at this year’s Alarm Performance Awards Ceremony (held at New Scotland Yard on 17 June).

“Reducing the number of false call-outs allows more efficient use of public funds. The Met estimates the cost of officers attending false alarms has fallen from the equivalent of £25 million in 2000 to around £8.5 million by 2005.”

Launched in 1999 as the first initiative of its kind to be implemented by a police force anywhere in the UK, the Alarm Performance Awards are designed to recognise those companies that have experienced the lowest false alarm rates within the Metropolitan Police’s boundary zones during the past 12 months. The scheme is also aimed at encouraging installers and their clients to improve standards in alarm system design and commissioning.

The 2005 ‘competition’ was divided into three categories, encompassing small companies (those managing between 50 and 999 systems), medium-sized operations (looking after 1,000-4,999 systems) and larger outfits taking care of over 5,000 alarm installations.

The Alarm Performance Awards winners are those companies with the best false alarm rate per system. In 2005, they are as follows:

Small Companies

Gold Award: Rampart Security

Silver Award: Albany Alarms

Bronze Award: Cox Security

Medium Companies

Gold Award: Spy Alarms

Silver Award: London East Security Centre

Bronze Award: Tara Burglar Alarms

Large Companies

Gold Award: Chubb Electronic Security

Silver Award: Banham Patent Locks and Alarms

Bronze Award: Initial Fire and Security

Two new awards were also added to this year’s BT RedCare-sponsored event, and judged by the Security Systems Inspectorate.

The Most Improved False Alarm Rate Award and the Individual Contribution to False Alarm Management Award (the latter devised in partnership with the Metropolitan Police Service) recognise exceptional performance in the discipline. The former award was won by Harris & Sandford Security, and the latter by Mike Bowman of London-based Banham Alarms for his personal attack alarm call-back system.