So much red tape

Kent & Sussex Security has only been in business for ten years, compared with Carl Samm's seventeen, and for much of that time we concentrated on CCTV and access control rather than intruder alarms.

We only started getting serious about alarms about two years ago when our customers started to ask for integrated electronic security systems, and that was about the time when the changes to the standards started to impact on the industry.

We do try to do things properly, so I read up everything I could about the various BS, EN and DD documents, scoured the BSIA, NSI, ACPO and SSAIB web sites, and went on a three day TAVCOM residential training course.

At the end of that process it became clear that even the so called professionals had not really come to a consensus about what the new standards meant in practice.

Even now, I still can't get my head round the matrix of signalling choices. If EN50131 is a camel designed by committee, then the signalling section is its hump!

My conclusion is that bad standards are a bit like bad law. In the end they simply don't work and people tend to disrespect and ignore them.

In practice, we go through all the risk assessment and survey procedures, we produce a specification, (or whatever we have to call it this week), with page after page of barely comprehensible techno-speak, and then invariably propose a Grade 2 system with redcare Classic. Unless the risks are extreme, or the insurers have decreed it, you exceed this level of protection at your peril, because your competitors won't. And that's without worrying about the complexity and hence reliability of Grade 3 equipment in general.

Organisations are vying to produce the longest, most demanding, most complicated questionnaires ...

Broadening the scope

Insurers may indeed want to ask for Grade 3 and some fairly exotic signalling choices but in time, even they would be well advised to guard against over-specifying. They too have competitors, and customers are quite capable of shopping around for insurance as they do for security.

So I agree wholeheartedly with what Carl has to say, but then I'd like to broaden the scope of the grumble just a little.

We have found over the past two years that as Gordon Brown has cranked up the taxation on the private sector, and increased the expenditure in the public sector, we have had to redirect our marketing efforts accordingly.

However, to break into the better prospects in the public sector, whether local authorities, housing associations, education departments etc, we have to get over the hurdle of the "Pre Qualification Process".

Now from what I can see these organisations have been vying with each other to produce the longest, most demanding, most complicated questionnaires. They no doubt employ armies of consultants to draw up requirements relating to health & safety, equal opportunities, ethnicity, environmental impact etc, which only other consultants can understand. So we, in turn, have to take on our own consultants to write protracted and detailed policies on everything from asbestos lagging to genetically-modified food in engineers' lunch boxes.

These policies are written by our consultants in terms designed to satisfy the first group of consultants who can then tick the box on the form, but are they any use for supplying to our engineers as guidance on the job? Of course not. Like EN50131, such policies are of very little practical help in helping us run our businesses.

We must speak with one voice against any further external regulation ...

But it doesn't stop there. As well as the policies, insurances, references etc, we are required to subscribe to an increasing array of accreditations from a variety of governmental, quango and private organisations to satisfy our various public sector customers and potential customers.

Form filling and paying out

For many years we have been assessed to the ISO9000 quality standard. We are an SSAIB accredited company, and we are members of the BSIA. I have no problem with these three as they do have a genuine standing in the wider commercial arena, and do bring benefits in terms of running our business. However, in recent years we have been required to achieve Investors in People, Constructionline, Safecontractor, CHAS, and another one I can't even remember the name of. In each case there is more form filling, re-writing of policies to meet their differing requirements, usually some form of inspection and, always, money to pay out!

The scope of the organisations overlap and duplicate each other, so why can't our public sector clients agree on some form of standardisation? Otherwise the list will grow and grow?

Before I climb down from my particular soap box, can I finish with some good news and some bad news? On the good news front, I think the intruder alarm BS/EN/DD/ACPO confusion will resolve itself within the next few years when the police finally stop responding to monitored alarms.

Whether this will be as a result of police policy or the insurers finally accepting that a private response is the better option, is immaterial. It will happen, and once ACPO is out of the frame then market forces will tend to prevail, governed by NSI and SSAIB for the electronic sector, and by the SIA for the guarding/mobile keyholding sector. Life could get a little simpler.

And that neatly brings me on to the bad news. My friends in the guarding sector tell me of all the horror stories connected with the SIA approval and licensing process, which is still going on. Are we next? The rumours tend to suggest we are. Surely we are already regulated, assessed and inspected to the hilt? Unlike the guarding sector, all of us working within the NSI/SSAIB arena have had all our employees vetted, for example.

So as a final plea, can our trade associations, trade publications, industry pundits and those of us running electronic security companies speak with one voice against any further external regulation. We have suffered enough!