ACPO Scotland publish draft appendix on lone worker alarm systems

Its been rumoured for a while now but ACPO in Scotland have finally published a draft appendix for public consultation on how they propose to allocate alarm URNs* north of the border. Appendix V mirrors the policy that has been deployed in England & Wales for over 3 years now in that it calls for the lone worker device and the Supplier to be audited and approved against BS8484.

It also calls for the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) to be accredited to BS8484 and BS5979 Cat II. Only with these standards in place can an ARC apply to Scottish Forces for a URN, only with a URN will they be able to guarantee a level 1 Police response to an incident that warrants the involvement of the Police.

The public consultation period is open now but it is expected that the appendix along with a number of other Policy amendments will be ratified and made policy by the end of March 2013.

So what you might ask? Well, if you are responsible for the well being of lone workers in your organisation and you would like the Police to respond as quick as they are able to when there is an incident you should check with your lone worker solution provider that they have or plan to obtain accreditation to BS8484 as soon as possible.

If you are a lone worker in Scotland then you may want to ask your employer if they are aware of this important policy development.

All solutions delivered by Connexion2 are compliant with BS8484 (apart from our iPhone solution due to some restrictions that Apple have). If you want to know more then come and talk to us.

*URN - unique reference number. This number allows an ARC to circumnavigate the 999 call system thus speeding up the time from raising an alarm to when the Police will respond.