Editorial

Following our original article by Carl Samm in our November edition we have had a flood of letters and emails from installers whose work has been turned upside down by EN50131. Following on from a record mailbox last month, we print two more pages of your letters in this edition generally agreeing that the standards are over complicated and were introduced in a manner that made it difficult to comply.

One reader has taken this whole argument on a further stage to the pile of other legislation and regulation that installers are presented with. Geoff Hilton says that having to jump through all the hoops from the many regulatory and accreditation bodies is becoming a big headache and is of little practical help in running the business. Despite the difficulties, his firm tries to do things properly. The danger in all this is, of course, that installers will decide to ignore the Euro regulations or opt out altogether – as has been indicated in some of our correspondence this month and last.

Alex Carmichael of the the BSIA has done a lot to try to help installers though these difficulties and has advised them at many seminars and meetings – some organised by this magazine – over the last couple of years. The design proposal is a much more complex document, he admits, but says most installers are getting to grips with grading and the situation is improving. Teething problems were unavoidable, he says.

This issue will not go away and, no doubt, we will have many more letters on this subject. So have your say in these pages. Security Installer has always been the forum for installers’ opinions, so keep sending them to us. Installers’ voices on the Euro standards have never been as loud as they are currently. Why didn’t they make more noise about this a couple of years ago? Some did – see our letters pages – but installers have generally been happy to comply with regulation. What other choice have they got? It’s only now that they are working to PD6662 that the problems are affecting business. So if you feel strongly about this issue write or email us.

All the letters, features and articles on EN50131 that we have carried over the last few years are on our website archives. It’s free to register and is a great resource for your business because it carries all of our editorial content since 1999 ... a lot of reading.

Finally, manufacturers ... we will be publishing a great IFSEC Magazine with our May edition. It might seem a long way off but we want to give this pivotal show the best printed accompaniment, so please start thinking about it asap. Send all news about your IFSEC plans to us at the addresses on this page.

Alan Hyder, editor