Stop 'installer bashing' and target end users

I don't know if you are already aware of the Nottinghamshire Police attempts to bring in confirmation for all systems in their force area, but I was at the November 2003 meeting with Notts Police when they first brought this up, and I have to say that they have brought the situation upon themselves. By their own admission, they have not been placing sanctions on poorly performing systems. So even if a system has caused three, five, ten or more activations – warranting Level 2 or Level 3 response – they still stay at Level 1.

Group 4 Falck is a market leader in the security industry. We have just become the first company in the UK to boast seven gold medals from the National Security Inspectorate, including our Alarm Receiving Centre, Patrol & Response services and, of course, Manned Guarding.

This is a major achievement for any company, reinforces our commitment to the customer and places Group 4 right at the top of the tree when it comes to quality.

There is enormous pressure on companies like ourselves to achieve such accreditation. So, when Nottinghamshire Police have totally failed to comply with their own policy requirements, how can they then hold NACOSS & SSAIB accredited installers at fault for high false alarm attendance rates? I believe there is little more the alarm industry on its own can do.

There are far too many cases nowadays where the end-user will not take responsibility for their systems' poor performance.

When the end-user has only purchased a system in order to satisfy their insurers, installers can only do so much, as they are then unfairly accused of trying to sell up a system unnecessarily.

It is a fact of life that with today's reliable technology and the extremely high degree of filtering by ARCs like ourselves, the vast majority of false alarms are now user induced.

Retrospective application of the ACPO Security Systems Policy is only one step away from not attending any activations whatsoever. If the police do not want to attend alarm activations, then it's about time they finally admitted to it.

Group 4 already operates its own extremely effective, national Patrol & Response service which, unlike the police, guarantees a response to a subscriber's alarm system. However, at the moment, police attendance is still the ABI's preferred response and so I believe there are now limited courses that can be taken –

1. Further "tweaking" of the existing Policy – this never has and never will deal with the root cause of false alarms.

2. Financial penalties taken against the system owner – on the face of it a good option, but there are all sorts of problems along this road.

3. A national campaign led by the police and including both the alarm and insurance industries, aimed at educating alarm users on the impact of poorly performing systems. As an example, it is still widely believed by alarm users that because they pay Rates and Council Tax, they have an automatic right to a police response to their systems, no matter how many times they activate. I say a "police led" campaign because, by nature, the general public tend to accept without question, information provided by the police. If we (alarm industry or insurers) tried to lead such a campaign, there is a danger it will be perceived as some sort of sales ploy.

Unfortunately, at the moment the police do not see that they have any responsibility other than quoting the ACPO Security Systems Policy at anything that moves.

If they are serious in their wish to maintain a response to intruder alarms, they need to stop "installer bashing" and accept that alarm users are now the prime cause of false alarms, and work with us to resolve the problem.