UK Police should only attend 10% of all Alarms!

Some surprising statistics…

Alarm Systems v Activations
1,149,077 intruder alarm systems in the UK hold a Police ‘Unique Reference Number’ (URN *) 368,314 alarm activations** occurred in a 12-month period. However, some systems do enter alarm mode several times whilst some never activate at all.

Activations, False v Genuine
Of the 368,314 alarm activations, just 39,243 were genuine! Therefore, 89% of all activations were false alarms. These were mainly due to user error, faulty equipment and breaks in communication lines/signal paths.

A staggering 9 out of every 10 monitored activations are false alarms.

Wasted Police Resources
It doesn’t take much to see the massive amounts of Police resources being wasted each and every day. The false alarm statistics do tend to improve slightly year on year but just how long can the business community realistically expect ‘Police Response’ to continue for free?

Is Police Response actually worth having?
Insurers would obviously prefer it if buildings were checked by the Police but even they admit that they can’t do much upon arrival. The Police don’t hold keys, alarm codes or passwords so they can’t access buildings to perform a full check unless an authorised Key Holder arrives.

I honestly don’t think it will be too long before UK Police forces start opting out of providing a first response to commercial alarms. They should only be required to attend if an on-site Key Holder can visually verify that a break in has occurred.

If your local force contacted you tomorrow, what would you prefer?
Would you prefer to see Police tackling anti-social behaviour on our streets or wasting valuable resources attending 329,071 false alarms unnecessarily?

Given the option, I know what I would rather choose…

* URN’s are issued by the Police.
They are only assigned to systems that have been professionally installed by accredited companies, are regularly maintained/upgraded and are monitored by a 24-hour Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC). Systems with a URN are given a Level 1, 2 or 3 Police Response.

** 01 April 2006 to 31 March 2007