False alarms tumble

False alarms in the Metropolitan Police area fell to 59,000 within the last year compared to 80,000 in the previous year.

The rate now stands at just one fifth of what it was ten years ago – and it means that the cost of attending false alarms has fallen by an estimated £24 million.

Metropolitan Police Commander Shabir Hussain thanked installers for their "professionalism, dedication" and "hard work" at the force's annual Alarm Performance Awards, in association with BT redcare, which honoured those firms that had achieved the lowest number of false activations.

He said that the higher reliability of alarms was eliminating the "element of crying wolf" in alarm response when officers would go out with a high expectation that the alarm would be false. Reduction of false alarms was also helping police to concentrate on dealing with the terrorism threat.

Chief Superintendent Stephen MacDonald of the Metcall unit said the cost of officers responding to false alarms has fallen from the equivalent of £32.85 million in 1996 to around £8.8million in 2006. He also praised the winning installers' "significant achievements" in gaining the sought-after awards and added that the alarm receiving centres had contributed greatly in filtering out false alarms produced by the 274,000 monitored systems in the Met area.

Jenny Waring, BT redcare’s head of sales propositions and campaigns, said the results were a "testimony to the high standards that can be achieved" and meant installers had played their part in allowing the police to be in the right place at the right time.

The Gold, Silver and Bronze awards, presented at Scotland Yard, were split into three categories: Large, Medium and Small installation companies with their ARCs. Results were:

Small Companies (50-999 systems)

Gold: Rampart Security (Custodian)

Silver: Home Counties (AIM)

Bronze: SO Secure (Yeoman)

Medium Companies (1000-4999 system)

Gold: Capstan Security (Banham)

Silver: London East Security Centre (Securi-Guard)

Bronze: Tara Burglar Alarms (Banham)

Large Companies (5000+ systems)

Gold: Banham Alarms (Banham)

Silver: Secom plc (Secom)

Bronze: Chubb Electronic Security (SMC Chubb)

Special awards

Two other partnership awards were also presented at the event.

The Special Partnership Award (for the development of electronic transfer of alarm activations in partnership with the Metropolitan Police) went to Chubb Electronic Security. The company entered into a major partnership with the MPS to cut call handling and speed up response. The partnership developed a method of passing activations direct to the Borough, thereby removing the need to use the dedicated phone line to telephone the emergency call operator in the relevant MPS call centre before the activation was passed to the Borough for response. Chubb's alarm receiving centre, SMC, now passes activations to the MPS only in this way and other major companies are queuing to join the electronic transfer method.

The False Alarm Reduction Award went to the Security System Section of the British Security Industry Association. They have produced a strategy for reducing false alarms which the MPS has supported. Discussions with the police were a major part of the consultation process.

Speaking after the awards, Peter Rutt, proprietor of Rampart Security, which had won the Small category Gold Award for the second year running, said his company's success was down to a mixture of good training and product support. He had a very low turnover of staff in his 12-strong engineering team.

"Rewarding them is important and it's not just about money. We have a very good engineering manager and training manager, both engineers".

With such a high percentage of false alarms down to user error it was important to minimise their involvement and he thought the industry should strive to "design out the user" with set-on-lock, and swipe and PIN functions within.

He believed the re-instatement issue gave installers a "big lever" with their customers and users needed to understand what they would have to pay to get back if they lost police response.

Harold Ashley, who accepted the Medium category Silver Award on behalf of London East Security Centre said cutting false alarms meant specifying the system properly, high quality of installation "and keeping things as simple as possible for the end user".

• Banham Alarms, the Large company Gold award winner, entered into a pilot scheme to reduce the number of PA alarm activations it was passing to Met Call centres. Banham PA filtering has seen a steady reduction in the number of PA activations passed and is currently down by 36 per cent.

• Julian Stanton, Marketing Manager, NSI, said the awards "provide important recognition of the high standards and and professionalism that our approved installers deliver to customers on a daily basis" and he congratulated the winners, eight of whom are NSI-approved companies.