Burglar Alarms near you

Alarm systems differ mainly in what happens in the minutes after a trigger, and that is where the ongoing commitment lives too. Decide what you want to happen at three in the morning while you are away, then buy the system that does it.

The licensing position is unusual and worth stating plainly. The SIA licenses security guarding, door supervision, close protection, cash and valuables in transit, public space surveillance using CCTV and key holding; its guidance on whether you need a licence does not list alarm installation or maintenance. So an alarm company is a business like any other, and the checks available to you are ordinary ones: a written specification, public liability insurance, a trading address, and the contract terms.

Electrical work is different. Approved Document P covers electrical safety in dwellings in England and explains when work has to be notified, and government-authorised competent person schemes exist so that a registered installer can self-certify the work instead of routing it through a building control body. Most alarm systems are low voltage, but the spur or supply feeding the panel is not, so ask who is responsible for that part and what certification you will receive.

In Scotland the building standards system runs on building warrants and technical handbooks rather than approved documents, and Northern Ireland has its own Building Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2012. Wherever you are, the question is the same: who is notifying or certifying the electrical work, and what paperwork lands in your hands at the end.

Repeated false alarms cost you your neighbours' goodwill first and your own attention second, and eventually they become a legal matter. In England and Wales, Part 7 of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 allows a local authority to designate an alarm notification area. Where one is in force, an occupier must nominate a key holder and notify the authority after installing an alarm, failing to do so is an offence that can be dealt with by a fixed penalty notice, and an authorised officer may enter to silence an alarm that has been sounding continuously or intermittently beyond the periods set out in the Act - forcing entry only under a warrant from a justice.

The Act sets out what a key holder has to be: someone who holds keys sufficient to gain access to the part of the premises where the alarm controls are, who lives near enough and knows how to silence it, and who has agreed to do the job. For residential premises the key holder cannot be the occupier, which rules out nominating yourself.

Northern Ireland handles the same nuisance through registration. In an alarm notification area there, an audible intruder alarm must have a nominated key holder that the police can contact, registered with the local council, with a duty to keep those details current and a fine for not following the rules.

Alarm monitoring is where the long-term money sits, so read that part of the contract hardest. Establish whether you own the equipment outright or are renting it, whether the panel can be taken over by another company later, what the notice period is, and what happens to the system if you stop the monitoring.

If you signed at home or over the phone, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give a cancellation period that ends 14 days after the day the contract was entered into for a service contract. Be careful with early starts: the right can be lost where the service has been fully performed and performance began at your express request with your acknowledgement that cancellation rights would be lost. A salesperson keen to have engineers out tomorrow may be shortening your options as well as your wait.

Ask precisely what a monitoring centre will do when a signal arrives, in order, and get the answer in writing rather than as reassurance on the doorstep: who is called, in what sequence, how long that takes, what happens if nobody answers, and who attends the property. Ask the same about a signalling failure, since a system that silently stops reporting is worse than one that never claimed to.

On the hardware side, agree the service interval, whether visits are included or charged, how long the standby battery is expected to last, and how you test the system yourself between visits. Keep the commissioning record and the service reports together; they are the only evidence of what the system was set up to do.

If you arrive to find the alarm sounding and signs of a break-in, do not go inside to look. Government guidance is to call 999 and ask for the police if you or someone else is in immediate danger or the crime is in progress, and otherwise to use 101 or the online reporting route, which is police.uk in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Police Scotland portal in Scotland. Wait somewhere safe, and leave the scene as it is.

Once the police have been and gone, a locksmith or glazier comes before the alarm engineer: get the property secure the same day, then have the system checked and reset. Note the crime reference the police give you, because the insurer and often the alarm company will ask for it.