Alarms

If your home has an alarm it should be set to cut out after 20 minutes to avoid causing a noise nuisance.
It is good practice to notify us of at least one keyholder who can attend your premises within 30 minutes and disable the alarm.
If the council receives complaints that the alarm has not cut out after 20 minutes then officers will phone the keyholder and ask them to disable the alarm.
The keyholder could be a friend or relative or a contractor from an alarm or security company. If we do not have the details of a keyholder and the alarm misfires then we can take steps to disable the alarm.
If we need to break in to your home to disable the alarm then we will get a warrant from the courts that allows us to do so.
Officers will normally call in a locksmith and an alarms contractor to assist. The council will then recover the costs from the owner of the premises; this can be expensive!

If you wish your alarm to be placed on our keyholder database please print the following document, complete and return it to:

Environmental Health, Public Health Services, Southampton City Council, Southbrook Rise, 4-8 Millbrook Road East, Southampton, SO15 1YG

Car alarms should cut out after a short period of time, if they misfire, we recommend one minute. When the council receives complaints that an alarm has not cut out, and is causing a noise nuisance then officers will make attempts to contact the registered keeper of the vehicle.
If the registered keeper is not contactable then we will make arrangements to stop the nuisance. This means:

• We disable the alarm and secure the vehicle.
• As a last resort we may need to tow the vehicle away.

The owner of the vehicle will be charged for any works we need to do