NPCC Security Systems Policy

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/23/005554/W

Version Date: 29/04/2024

The Call Management and Communications Department have provided the following information.

Freedom of Information Request with Reference to The constabulary’s Perceived Application of the NPCC Security Systems Policy.

With reference to the above Policy, I ask the following questions regarding the training of your new communications centre staff namely those who receive calls and/or deploy a police resource to incidents. This includes the supervisors of such staff and the senior officer in charge of the comms centre:

1.What is documented regarding the above staff being informed that your chief constable has banned the failed Type A systems that lose their Unique Reference Number (URN) from contacting your police communications centre on initial activation?  These have therefore joined the Type B alarms in no longer having a URN, namely those that refuse to abide by the policy. This matter of education is relevant to the correct application of the Codes of Ethics of Fairness, Honesty, Integrity, Accountability. These are essential requirements to the application of the Code of Ethics and the National Decision Model.

The NPCC Police Operational Advice and Security Industry Requirements for Response to Security Systems sets out the following guidance for Intruder and then Hold Up alarms as follows:

3.2.3 Following 3 false calls in a rolling 12 month period LEVEL 3 will apply and police response will be withdrawn, not less than 14 days from the date of the withdrawal letter. The customer will be advised in writing with a copy to the maintaining company, who will be required to instruct the monitoring centre not to pass alarm activations to the police. Notification of withdrawal may also be sent to the monitoring centre.

3.4.3 Following 2 false calls in a rolling 12 month period, LEVEL 3 will apply and police response will be withdrawn not less than 14 days from the date of withdrawal letter. The customer will be advised in writing with a copy to the maintaining company who will be required to instruct the monitoring centre not to pass alarm activations to the police. Notification of withdrawal may also be sent to the monitoring centre.

We are not aware that staff would specifically be informed that monitoring centres are instructed not to pass alarm activations to the police when response is withdrawn but PIRATES (our internal process and policy documentation system) does state:

• If an ARC phones up and does not have the URN we do NOT attend, likewise if the alarm comes up ‘suspended’ we do not attend.

2. What is documented about the above staff being educated in the requirement of a Keyholder to firstly attend all premises without a URN as per your published policy, namely the premises with the Type B and Failed Type A activations are to be treated the same? (See sections 3.1.1. Level Three – Withdrawn, and 3.6.4.)

The below guidance is given to staff as part of a PIRATES document entitled Alarms.  During their post initial training tutoring period this will be discussed with tutors.  If a new staff member takes a 999 call involving this type of alarm that will be recorded on their record of calls. 

1 – Guidance

Devon & Cornwall Police will respond to Alarms as detailed in accordance with the National Police Chiefs Council Security Systems Policy. There are certain types of Alarm calls that do require police attendance and others which should be graded based on the circumstances, in accordance with D51.

It is important to establish which type of alarm is the reason for the call.

Questions:

• Location
• Type of alarm (i.e. house/car/business)?
• How long has it been sounding?
• Anything suspicious seen (i.e. persons running, insecure doors/windows)?

2 – Type A – Centrally Monitored Systems

If a call is received from an ARC (Alarm Receiving Centre) enter the URN in the first field of a new log, putting @ in front of the URN. The URN should have a prefix PL, EX or DCP followed by numbers.  So the entry would look as follows @PL12345, @EX23456 or @DCP567.  This should automatically populate the log with the address of the location. 

If it does not then it is likely that the URN has had response withdrawn due to false alarm issues and the ARC should be instructed that we will not attend. And to contact the Alarms Administration Office.

When response is withdrawn, we leave the Active Tick in the Storm Log so that Control can still see the URN when it is provided by the ARC.

Ask the ARC the location to ensure the URN has correctly sigged before providing incident number to the ARC.

ACTIONS – Contact Officer:

• You should confirm with the ARC that they have called the listed keyholders
• Transfer the log – Priority Control to C&C, as per force grading and deployment policy D51.
• If an ARC phones up and does not have the URN we do NOT attend, likewise if the alarm comes up ‘suspended’ we do not attend.
• THRIVE to be completed.

3 - Type B – Audible only Alarms (No URN)

This type of alarm call will not receive a response unless an offence is seen to have taken place at the time by the caller, or a third party who may have strong suspicion that an offence may be in progress or have taken place i.e. persons seen, signs of damage, insecurity etc.

ACTIONS – Contact Officer:

• If there are no additional circumstances a log should still be created and a check for any key holders made (check the AIB for Alarm, if it is blue there are key holder details). If details are found then the force has an obligation to ring them and advise them of the activation.
• Where there are no additional circumstances present the caller is to be advised “it is the policy of the force that without additional circumstance other than the alarm sounding we will not be sending a police officer” “Your call has been recorded”.
• THRIVE to be completed.”

As part of the Resource and Incident Management Officer “Dispatch Training” there is an Alarms presentation that explains the above. The lesson plan states;

“Slide 3 – commercially monitored alarms

Explain to the students that a number of commercial (and some private) buildings will pay extra to alarm companies (like ADT) to monitor their alarms and notify police about activations. When the ARC gets an activation, they will call through to the control room on a dedicated number (does not go through to FCC) and will quote a URN.

URNs will have 4 or 5 numbers prefixed by a PL, EX or DCP. 

Enter the URN in the address field e.g. @DCP4569. Press enter and it should validate to an address. If it doesn’t, try using a space between the DCP (or PL or EX) prefix and the number. 

Ask the ARC what address they have on their system for that URN and they should confirm the address you have just validated. DON’T offer them the address - they must give us the address, not the other way round, it could be someone fishing for information.

It is the ARC’s responsibility to call keyholders they have on file to attend the location to reset the alarm. Just check with them that they are going to do this and record it on the log. A quick way of doing this is by typing WACK – we are calling keys.

Give the log number to the ARC and end the call.

Transfer log for control to the RDO.

If it does not validate to an address we will not be attending.”

We are not aware that it is a requirement for a keyholder to firstly attend all premises without a URN, neither are we aware of any such policy.

Re 3.1.1 states LEVEL 3 – Withdrawn No police attendance, keyholder response only.

The keyholder only response is managed by the monitoring company.  Keyholder details are not held by the police for any Type A alarms.

3.6.4 states Type B systems will require evidence from a person at the scene that a criminal offence is in progress which indicates that a police response is required. This will require the presence of a person(s) such as a member of public, owner or agent at, or in close proximity to, the location of the incident. The addition of electronic means or non-compliant systems to provide confirmation will not promote such systems to Type A to achieve police response. Type B system calls should be passed to the police directly from the person at the scene of the incident by dialling 101 or 999 as appropriate, not through a third party or compliant/non-compliant monitoring centre.

3.If there is no documentation to 3) above, what documentation is there to explain to the alarm purchasing public that clearly states the Type B and Withdrawn Type A can be treated differently, namely the Type B alarms can always be considered for attendance but the failed Type A’s never can be, having been banned from contact by your chief constabl

4. What is documented about the training given to new communications centre staff on the application of the Health and Safety at Work Act to all sensor anomaly incidents, Type A (with a URN), Type B (without a URN) and the failed Type A (that have had their URN ‘Withdrawn’ or ‘Deleted’) as per the Appendix G form?
5. What is documented about any added training input which educates the above staff on the reason why your chief constable has added to the Appendix G the reason for the Civil Tort Legislation, namely The Occupiers Liability Act 1957, added as recent as April 2022?
   Your chief constable states, ‘Police officers will not normally enter the premises without the keyholder. However, this may be necessary on occasions due to suspicious circumstances. To ensure the safety of officers, the force must be pre-warned of site risks, therefore you are required to state any site hazards in accordance with the Occupiers Liability Act 1957.’
6. What is documented where your constabulary ever disagrees with any part of the policy and asked for a policy amendment?
7. What documentation is there on any local procedure that your constabulary applies to drive forward the further applications for URNs by those businesses and dwellings that wish to protect their premises by a police attendance? This drive towards 100% of premises applying for URNs would increase the Health and Safety features of the policy by alarms of a minimum standard and requirements for premise staff to be trained in order to reduce false activations, with a maximum number of false applications, at which the police will act to ban further calls by removal of the URN and a ban on the call from the Alarm Receiving Centre. (These points are related to points 3 and 4 above.

We cannot identify any specific records or documents held by Devon & Cornwall Police that will satisfy your request based on the details that you have provided for questions 3 -7. To locate the information relevant to your request searches were conducted within the Call Management and Communications Department.