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I refer to the false alarms information to be published in September's issue of Security Installer ("Cause for Alarm" on the NSI research project findings): On experience of my own company as well as that of others in the industry, I would be surprised if the results do not show that the majority of false alarms that result in either an engineer presence, a neighbour nuisance or a police attendance are the result of the headless chicken syndrome.

I, of course, refer to the clueless individuals, who forget a code, enter the duress code rather than the user code and wander around the building having done so causing confirmed signalling to the central station … and all this despite being instructed that if any problems occur on entry, that they should leave the building and phone for or await assistance, in order to prevent a false police attendance.

How can we cure this problem? We can make them pay for the wasted police time and the cost of hiring another police team to attend to the needs of true victims of crime.

I am sure your survey may show other causes, such as a minority of bad installations (inappropriate detectors, bad surveys and a lack of protection from impedance, RF, spikes and even lightening. I would be shocked if the survey does not come to the conclusion that the problems with false alarms may be reduced by good, surveys and good engineering practices, in the minority of cases. With the prevalent problem being subscriber/ human error/behaviour, that accounts for the majority.