How to minimise the risk of false alarms

Whether it’s a fire alarm or an intruder alert, false alarms can be hugely disruptive, whatever your business does. From evacuating a busy retail outlet for a non-existent fire to sending the emergency services to investigate a non-existent intruder, false alarms are at best inconvenient and at worst financially and even reputationally damaging. But there are ways to minimise the risk of a false alarm, and that’s what we’ll be exploring today.

The impact of false alarms

If you’ve ever been in a restaurant when it’s had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm, you’ll know just how disruptive it is having your meal interrupted – and you’ll also know the frustration when it all turns out to have been for nothing. You might even have been tempted to leave a negative online review. But inconvenience to customers is the thin end of the wedge when it comes to false alarms.

For restaurants, an unnecessary evacuation means food going to waste and reduced covers for that service. For retail outlets, a full evacuation at peak times can result in significant lost sales, with no guarantee that the customers who’ve been evacuated will have the patience to wait around until the all clear is given. On the burglar alarm front, a false alarm could mean an out-of-hours security response – one that results in the stress of getting out of bed to deal with the situation in the small hours, or a costly intervention by a private security guarding firm.

Then there’s the added risk of wasting the time of the emergency services, and that’s not without financial implications either. Many fire services charge businesses for repeated false alarms, which can soon add up. Humberside Fire Service, for instance, has a minimum callout fee of £430.75 per hour for false alarms, while the London Fire Brigade charges £290 plus VAT per callout if your business has had more than ten false alarms in a year.

Of course, false alarms of any kind can also lead to a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation: the alarm goes off so often and turns out to be nothing, that the one time it activates and there really is a fire or an intruder, people fail to act. This desensitisation is dangerous, as it could mean delays in responding to a genuine alarm.

In short, too many false alarms can undermine your business in a variety of ways, damaging your reputation with both customers and the emergency services, eroding trust and bringing on a variety of direct and indirect costs.

So what can you do to minimise the risk of a false alarm?

How to stop false fire alarms

Let’s start with fire alarms. It’s a surprisingly simple fix: remote monitoring. Our fire alarm monitoring service gives you the confidence that a human is conducting a remote visual inspection of your premises to check whether or not a fire alarm is genuine. We’re ready to act accordingly and call the emergency services if we see evidence of a real fire, but if not, you can relax knowing you won’t have to suffer the disruption of an evacuation, minimising the impact on your business.

How to stop false intruder alarms

Intruder alarms can be triggered by all kinds of things, not just a burglar. We often see false alarms caused by something as simple as the air conditioning being left on, windows being left open, or motion in the street outside.

We’ve come up with a clever solution to this: our iGuard security system uses AI to detect people rather than motion. Not only does this mean that the alarm only sounds when the motion it detects is caused by an actual person, but it can even tie in facial recognition to work out whether or not the person it detects is authorised to be on your premises or not. This adds an extra layer of false alarm prevention, allowing you to be as sure as you can that it’s only sounding for genuine threats.

Find out more

Don’t take any chances when it comes to false alarms. Give us a call on 01749 600 600 and we’d be delighted to answer any of your questions and discuss your fire and intruder alarm needs.