North Yorkshire Police and Devon and Cornwall Police now ECHO-connected

Leading ECHO-connected Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs) including ADT, Secom, Cougar Monitoring/K-SOC and Banham Security are now delivering automated alarm signalling service levels in excess of 90%, thereby facilitating quicker police response and ensuring faster and more effective action.

James Sharp, operations director at Cougar Monitoring/K-SOC, explained: “Using ECHO to contact the police has provided several benefits, particularly so in terms of enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of our response. The uniformity of the data being sent to the police has meant a consistent response and timely dispatch. It has also enabled us to keep track of our live URNs in a more efficient way.”

Sharp continued: “The speed of alarm signal delivery to the police has witnessed a marked improvement. The time taken to pass alarms significantly reduces and yields a more accurate and instantaneous response. This allows for better scalability, reliability and time efficiencies. We’re also able to better report against activations as our alarm management system logs the case in a step-by-step sequence, removing the need to listen back to call recordings in order to investigate an incident.”

Paul MacQueen, Command and Control manager at Secom, commented: “I’ve been with SECOM for over 32 years and, in that time, seen many significant changes and improvements within our industry. The introduction of ECHO is another one of those changes that has improved our industry for certified security companies in terms of speed of police response, driving better customer service for our clients, as well as enhancing the labour and time efficiency within our business.”

Rick Carr, systems manager at ADT Fire and Security, observed: “ADT has a long history of automated alarm transfers to the police which precedes the ECHO story. We are now firmly committed to ECHO, which has created an opportunity for all police forces to benefit from automated alarm transfer, while at the same time keeping it simple for ARC infrastructures.”

Proof of concept

At Banham Security, associate director Roger Kay noted: “Banham was very excited to be a part of the proof of concept for ECHO in the early days, testing the passing of URNs to Essex Police and the Metropolitan Police Service. It’s true to say we’ve never looked back. There are no downsides to the ECHO process and it’s certainly quicker and more accurate than calling the Force Control Room. Any associated cost more than repays itself.”

Kay added: “ECHO makes it as simple as possible to declare URN elements by the associated force, while customers benefit from officers attending as quickly as is humanly possible. Our regular internal URN audits are a good thing, more than offsetting our time saved in operations.”

Martin Harvey, director at ECHO, informed Security Matters: “ECHO has proven itself to deliver a win-win for police forces and ARCs in responding to alarm incidents, enabling a fast and efficient response with an increased likelihood of better outcomes for the victims of crime, at the same time ensuring a better use of resources by all players in delivering that outcome. This is the potential reality for all police forces and we encourage those who have yet to commit to become ECHO-connected as soon as possible.”

Eight additional police forces (namely Dorset, Durham, Gwent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Merseyside, Surrey and Sussex) have installed their ‘Alarms Interface’ and are currently awaiting activation.

In 2025, ECHO is planning to further enhance its interface package to include the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) data upon which some police forces rely, as well as police responder ‘time of arrival’ (at incidents) and incident reason codes to better inform ARCs and their customers about incident status in real-time, further improving links between ARCs and their police counterparts, while also saving call handlers’ time.

*Further information is available online at www.echo.uk.net