Guardian24, a leading provider of lone and mobile worker safety solutions, are pleased to announce that their Alarm Receiving Centre, Community Safety Glasgow (CSG), have been awarded the BS8484 accreditation for its capability to monitor lone working alarms. BS8484 is the code of practice for the provision of lone worker device services and being awarded this accreditation ensures that should a panic alert be received by CSG, they can bypass the 999 system and go straight to the appropriate police control room, receiving the highest level of police response available. This speed in response can be critical in potentially life-threatening circumstances as precious time is saved when dispatching the appropriate response.
Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs) who are not audited and certified by BS8484, are reliant on dialling 999 in an emergency and cannot guarantee a timely police response. However being accredited to BS8484 standard means that when a Lone Worker raises a panic alert on their personal safety solution, the police will respond with the highest level of response available as they will know it comes from an accredited ARC and is likely to be a genuine request for help.
The BS8484 standard is also intended to minimise the number of false alarms received by response services. On a Guardian24 lone worker solution, once a panic alert is raised, a live line of audio recording is opened which allows the ARC to listen in live and hear what is happening during the panic alert situation. This enables the ARC to establish the severity of the Lone Worker’s situation and verify if it is a genuine request for help or otherwise. This is essential to gain police support by reducing false alarms and unnecessary demands on their response resources. An additional benefit of the live audio is that if a genuine alert is raised, the recording of the audio can be used as evidence in court.
Lisé Fisher, Operations Manager at CSG comments; “We are delighted to be awarded NSI accreditation for BS8484. This is a welcome addition to our monitoring portfolio and strengthens our position as a Gold Standard CAT II ARC. The standard states that the ARC must be satisfied that the alarms originate from personal safety devices which are certified to BS8484 and the suppliers of the devices are also BS8484 certified. This is why CSG partner with Guardian24, the award winning lone and mobile worker safety solutions provider of the year.”
Being awarded the BS8484 accreditation shows that CSG are a reputable and certified alarm receiving centre and the standard can be used by prospective clients as a benchmark against which Lone Worker services can be measured.
