Vocal Voices

A house alarm over the road went off at 6:15 pm..... it is still squawking away. I goes off for 20 mins or so then turns off, but after a few minutes it fires up again. A group of us neighbours have been out wondering what to do.

I rang 101, the police, but as there is no ongoing crime, apparently, they were not interested and gave me the council Noise Nuisance number.

Called NN, but there is nothing they can do except log my call because it is not an ongoing domestic complaint.

What is the point of having an alarm if nobody is prepared to investigate!?

Oh blimey Wm that would be driving me mad, especially wondering if it would be doing it all night
So does anyone know who lives there, if it's a let, the landlord? - No doubt you've already thought along those lines

Oh no, I hate that noise!! You have my deepest sympathies.
Ring every 20 mins when it goes off, that should make it an ongoing domestic complaint.

One of our neighbours actually shot out an alarm the other year - maybe not recommended in England, but no worries over here - it' s a holiday home and they're still not back

and that is why I don't have an alarm. More trouble than they are worth

When my smoke alarm goes of burnt toast I just hit it with my walking stick
Neighbours never knock

We are about to put in security cameras to go with our house alarm... (Rich looking house, next to park, adjacent to worst street on the north shore)

Nobody takes any notice of house alarms any more. The only time the police did respond was a few years ago when an alarm had been going off for a whole day in 20 minute bursts with a short break between. Apparently it is against the law to have an alarm that rings for such a long time and they did sort it.

I hope that got sorted Frank, and didn't keep squawking overnight

I think it's true that nobody takes any notice of such alarms any more One was going off at an empty unit in town recently, I was in town for several hours and it was still going when I passed it for the second time on my way home

It is a pain in the you know what Frank and to be perfectly honest, unless an alarm is connected to a private security firm there really isn't any point in having one.

Years back, my first flat I bought had an alarm installed which I never used because I don't like them at all. Then about a year or so after moving in, upstairs had a problem with their bathroom which ended up with water coming into the cupboard where I had the fuse box and the alarm control - and I can't remember what the reason was but for some reason the alarm was never reconnected to the mains (I think I had the fuse board replaced actually). Little did I know that the alarm then runs for about 6 months on back up battery and then all hell breaks loose, in my case at 3am in the morning and I just couldn't switch the blasted thing off. In the end I was outside on a ladder in my jimjams, brandishing a screw driver and stanley knife and broke into the alarm box outside and then proceeded to cut every single cable that there was to shut it up. Took about 15 minutes or so, if not longer, and during that time not a single curtain twitched, no police, nothing, nada zilch - so what was the point. Needless to say it was never replaced, but I did keep the box on the outside as a potential deterrent.


Hopefully the alarm that was going off last night soon stopped and you got some sleep?