Will the police respond to my burglar alarm?

Only if your alarm is professionally monitored and the property holds a valid Unique Reference Number (URN) issued by your local police force. The police do not respond to bells-only alarms, to self-monitored app alerts, or to systems without a URN — in those cases you are reporting a suspected crime yourself, like any other member of the public.

Police response to alarms in England and Wales runs under national policy set by the National Police Chiefs' Council, applied locally by each force. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own equivalent arrangements.

The conditions are consistent in outline. The system must be installed and maintained by a company certificated by an approved inspectorate — in practice the NSI or SSAIB. It must be monitored by a certificated ARC. And the force must have issued a URN for that specific address.

Without a URN there is no police response to the alarm itself. That does not leave you helpless: if you have evidence of a crime in progress you can call the police directly, and they will respond on the basis of that report. But the alarm activation alone will not generate an attendance.

This is the single most misunderstood point in the category, and it is worth being blunt about it: buying a camera-based DIY system with an app does not get you police response, whatever the marketing implies.