The short answer
A good monitoring centre works from an escalation ladder: named contacts in an agreed order, with the times each is available, and an agreed point at which it stops calling and acts — sending a response officer, calling the police where the alarm is confirmed, or another step you have chosen. If nobody answers, that decision has already been made in daylight, not left to chance at 3am.
What an escalation ladder contains
- Named contacts, in the order they will be called.
- When each is available — the manager who is fine at 7pm but not at 3am.
- What each can decide: who can authorise a call-out, an engineer, or a board-up.
- The action point: after how many attempts, or how long, the centre stops calling and acts.
- What “act” means for your site: our response team, a guarding partner, the police where a confirmed alarm qualifies, or logging it for the morning.
Why ladders fail
Almost always because they are out of date. People leave, change phones and go on holiday, and nobody tells the monitoring company. A ladder that worked in January can end in three dead numbers by June.
Keeping it working
- Review the list on a schedule, and after any incident.
- Have at least one contact who is genuinely reachable overnight — or put a keyholding service on the ladder so there always is one.
- Tell your monitoring centre the same day someone leaves.
How we do it
Every site we watch has its own written ladder, agreed with you before it goes live and checked periodically and after any incident. What happens when an alarm goes off sets out every step.
Talk it through with us
Every site is different. Tell us about yours and we will tell you plainly what we would do.