Monitoring News
Every month our Managing Director, Steve Kimber, fills us in on the latest monitoring news.
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Below is an archive of the previous year's monthly columns or click here for earlier news columns.
| March 12 | February 12 | January 12 |
| December 11 | November 11 | October 11 |
| September 11 | August 11 | July 11 |
| June 11 | May 11 | April 11 |
Connections
April 2010
Hello Again,
Do policemen still have policemen’s balls? Sounds funny, but apparently they do!
Not in the form of black tie dinner dances for charity, but by way of trying to milk the consumer dry again by trying to increase what can only be described as a stealth tax. So it appears they do have balls, but not as we know them!
Many civilian depts in the various police forces that manage the applications for URN’s do so without incurring overbearing costs; they should not make a huge profit by the charges raised (which they are not allowed to do). But they should not make a loss.
However, there are moves afoot to significantly increase the costs for their services because (apparently) other alarm administration depts are operating at huge losses, now and in the past.
In the current economic climate both government and private industry are cutting waste so as to reduce costs to the public or customers they serve, as it would be economic suicide to do otherwise. Perhaps, if this is indeed such an issue (and I have seen no evidence to support any such claims), the thought process should be toward centralization and efficiency throughout the UK, with an online URN process where an installer purchases URN’s as they do for SSAIB or NSI certificates of compliance.
Some of the proposals for increasing charges include:
- A restoration charge (equivalent to URN fee) made for all security systems taken off response.
- An annual Data Cleansing fee of £1 per system levied against the security company responsible for the URN
- A charge for each Criminal Record Check made by Forces undertaking screening.
- The current URN fee to undergo re-evaluation
- The year-on-year charge for new URN’s to be subject to an annual increase
- By 2017 the fee for issuing URN’s would better reflect the costs incurred by Forces.
I know what I think; perhaps you would like to convey your thoughts to your Trade Association representatives to ensure your views are taken into account?
Bye for now,
Steve