Alarm monitoring with police response
Monitoring by a certificated Alarm Receiving Centre with a police Unique Reference Number for your address, so confirmed activations can be passed to your local force.
Home alarm monitoring
What monitoring adds to a house alarm, what it costs, and what police response actually requires.
Who home monitoring is for
The honest test is what happens when the alarm sounds and nobody is there. If the house is regularly empty, if it is isolated enough that a siren goes unheard, or if the contents would be painful to lose, monitoring is the upgrade that changes the outcome. If someone is almost always home and the neighbours are close and reliable, a bells-only alarm is not a bad decision.
Monitoring is also the only route to police attendance. No UK force responds to a bells-only alarm as an alarm activation, and no self-monitored app can obtain a Unique Reference Number.
What a typical home setup looks like
Most UK homes are specified at Grade 2 under BS EN 50131, with a signalling device sending activations over broadband, a mobile network, or both. Response is usually the Alarm Receiving Centre calling you, then two nominated keyholders — commonly a family member and a neighbour — with police response added where the system qualifies.
Paid keyholding is less common domestically. It makes sense for isolated or high-value homes, and for anyone with nobody local willing to attend at 3am.
The cheap mistake to avoid
Keyholder details going stale. A perfect monitoring contract produces nothing if the numbers on file belong to a neighbour who moved away two years ago. Review the list annually — it is free, and it is the highest-value maintenance you will ever do.
Questions
Is a monitored alarm better than a bells-only alarm?
A monitored alarm produces a response when nobody is there to hear the siren, which is the situation most burglaries happen in — so for an empty property, monitoring is the meaningful upgrade. A bells-only alarm is cheaper, has no ongoing fee, and still deters, but nothing follows the noise.
The honest comparison is about what happens after activation. Both types make a noise and both deter opportunists. Only one of them results in a phone call or an attendance.
Bells-only makes sense if the property is rarely empty, if neighbours are close and reliable, or if the budget genuinely does not stretch to a monthly fee. It is much better than no alarm.
Monitoring makes sense if the property is regularly empty, if it is isolated enough that a siren goes unheard, if it holds high-value contents, or if an insurer requires it. It is also the only route to police attendance: no UK police force responds to a bells-only alarm as an alarm activation.
Note that monitoring is not a substitute for the basics. A monitored alarm on a house with an insecure back door is still a house with an insecure back door.
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.
How much does alarm monitoring cost in the UK?
Typical UK alarm monitoring runs from roughly £12 to £25 a month for digital monitoring, £20 to £40 with police response, and £25 to £70 where keyholder attendance is included. Remote CCTV monitoring costs more and varies widely with camera count and hours. These are indicative market ranges, not quotes — your actual price depends on the system, the risk and the response level.
The variables that move the price are the response level, the signalling configuration, the number of zones or cameras, whether the communicator is bought or rented, and the contract length.
There are also costs that are not the monitoring fee, and they are the ones that surprise people. Police URN issue and annual maintenance fees are set by each force and charged to you. A signalling device supply and install is typically a few hundred pounds one-off. Alarm maintenance — required if you want to keep police response — is usually a separate annual charge.
Ask for a written breakdown that separates monitoring, maintenance, police fees, hardware and any early-termination terms. Two quotes with the same monthly figure can differ substantially once those are visible.
Because we match you with providers rather than selling monitoring ourselves, we set none of these prices. The ranges above exist so you can tell at a glance whether a quote is normal, and they are reviewed periodically rather than continuously.
Should I self-monitor my alarm with an app instead of paying for monitoring?
Self-monitoring is cheaper and genuinely useful, but it makes you the control room: you must be awake, in signal, and willing to act. It cannot obtain police response, has no fallback when you are unreachable, and no record of who did what — so it suits low-risk properties rather than replacing professional monitoring where the stakes are higher.
The honest case for self-monitoring: for a modest-risk home, an app alert plus a camera plus a neighbour is a real improvement over bells-only, at no monthly cost beyond the hardware. Many people are well served by it.
The limits are structural rather than technical. You cannot get a URN, so there is no police response to the activation. There is no escalation when you are asleep, abroad, in a meeting or out of signal. There is no verified log for an insurer. And you are the one deciding, at 3am on partial information, whether to drive to the property.
There is also a quiet failure risk: a self-monitored system that stops reporting usually tells nobody, because there is no supervised path being polled and no centre noticing silence.
The middle option people miss is professional monitoring with nominated personal keyholders instead of a paid response contract. That gets you supervision, escalation and the URN route at the lower end of monitored pricing.
Who can I nominate as a keyholder?
Anyone you trust who can get to the property reasonably quickly, has keys and the alarm code, knows the ARC password, and is willing to be called at any hour. Most providers ask for at least two nominated keyholders so there is a fallback when the first cannot be reached.
The usual candidates are a partner, an adult family member nearby, a neighbour, or for a business, a manager and a deputy. The test is not formal, it is practical: will this person answer the phone at 4am and actually go?
Set expectations with them honestly. A keyholder should not confront anyone. The job is to look from a safe distance, and call the police if something is obviously wrong. Anyone who would feel obliged to be brave is the wrong choice.
Keep the list current. Keyholder details going stale — a changed mobile number, a neighbour who has moved away — is the most common reason a monitoring contract fails to produce a response, and it is entirely avoidable. Review it annually, and whenever someone on it moves or leaves.
If nobody suitable is local, that is the case for a paid keyholding service.
Can I get alarm monitoring in a rented property?
Yes, though you will usually need your landlord's written permission because fitting a communicator and any new detectors involves altering the property. Where an alarm is already installed, adding monitoring is often possible with minimal change, and the monitoring contract can be in the tenant's name.
Two situations. If an alarm already exists, a takeover survey can often add a communicator with little or no alteration, which is the easy case. If there is no alarm, installation means cabling or fixing devices, and that needs the landlord's consent.
Sort out in advance who holds the contract and what happens when the tenancy ends: whether the monitoring transfers, whether the hardware stays, and who pays any early-termination charge. A twelve-month monitoring contract on a six-month tenancy is a predictable problem.
If you want police response, note that the URN attaches to the address, and the maintenance contract requirement means the landlord will need to be comfortable with an ongoing arrangement on their property.
For landlords, monitoring on an empty or between-tenancy property is often worth more than during a tenancy, since that is when nobody is there to hear anything.
Services
Keyholding and alarm response
A security company holds keys to your property and attends when the alarm activates, covering the majority of activations that police response does not.
Remote CCTV and video monitoring
Cameras watched or reviewed by a monitoring centre on trigger, with operators able to assess what is happening and issue a live audio challenge.
Fire alarm monitoring
Fire detection connected to an Alarm Receiving Centre so activations are acted on when the building is empty or out of hours.
Lone worker alarm monitoring
Personal devices for staff working alone, monitored so an alert can be assessed, located and escalated — including to police where the service meets BS 8484.
Alarm takeover and switching provider
Having an approved company inspect, maintain and monitor an alarm installed by someone else — the normal route when you move in somewhere with an alarm, or want to leave your current provider.
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