Welcome to our Industry Insight blog series inspired by articles and comment on the web.
In this blog, Lookout Call’s Brian Caddy examines the recent amendments to British Standard BS8484 and the Level 1 Police Response to emergencies.
This year Lookout Call Product Manager and Lone Working Expert Brian Caddy attended the 3 day IFSEC International conference in London.
IFSEC describes itself as “the biggest security exhibition in Europe …[which] welcomes over 33,000 global security professionals to experience the latest technological innovations and hear from industry leaders …. With over 600 exhibitors showcasing over 10,000 products..”
This year’s event saw talks on a variety of subjects, including one regarding updates to British Standard BS8484 covering the provision of lone worker device services.
In a nutshell, from Aug/Sept 2016, BS8484 will be restricting the Police ‘guaranteed level one response’ to only the most serious of incidents affecting lone workers, largely due to the austerity measures which have led to savage cuts to Police budgets.
As this is a significant policy change it was disappointing that only 4 people showed up to hear the important news of significant backpedalling on central elements of the much-vaunted Level 1 Police response.
The revelation may lead many organisations to wonder whether the revised BS8484 standard is worth the extra financial outlay when considering lone worker systems. Many systems sold on the premise of the Level 1 Police response charge premium prices and are able to do so as buyers see them as more effective. The veracity of this assumption in practice has been questionable for some time and this update will cast further doubt upon it.
Lookout Call covered the changing stance of police towards lone worker emergencies in our A Quiet Earthquake blog last August. This generated considerable attention, as did our follow-up Accredited ARCs & the URN System.