Disruption and chaos in the UK

The UK has had in place a voluntary system of accreditation and inspection based on BS 4737 since 1972. Compare this with the dilatory development of European standards being developed through the European committee TC 79 (the technical committee for security systems reporting to CENELEC).

TC 79 has managed to produce just two out of the 19 standards that were started back in 1989. BS EN 50131-1: 1997 was launched with a shower of publicity and messages of support from all concerned but died on the vine when interpretations of clause 8.1.1 ensured that not a single one of these systems has ever been installed.

There are more than one million monitored security systems in the UK, all installed and maintained to BS 4737 which, despite it's longevity, has enabled the design and use of updated technology and systems as competence requirements moved with the times and expectations.

  A review of work at TC 79 in 2002 included the current EN 50131-1: 1997 and its eventual replacement prEN 50131.

TC 79 decided that they would recommend to CENELEC that a 'date of withdrawal' should be assigned to prEN 50131 when it was published.

In June 2002 CENELEC decided to ignore that recommendation and assigned the DOW to EN 50131-1: 1997.

CENELEC has now had to take note of the savaging their decision has received and extend that DOW date. Their new date is said by them to be a 'compromise'.

I suppose that is one way of dealing with a problem that they created by ignoring the advice of their own technical committee. It endeavours to accommodate the calls for extensions of at least two years without accepting that their decision to overrule TC 79 was irresponsible if not technically incompetent.

In reality CENELEC have demonstrated that they had no confidence in the advice of their technical committee, and have now signalled by this last decision that they too deserve just as little confidence.

TC 79 were right in advising that the DOW should be on prEN 50131 when it is published. If CENELEC can't live with that then either they or TC 79 should resign and hand on the job to those that can be responsible. In the meantime, BS 4737 remains the system of choice in the UK.