Terms and Conditions
of Trading

General

The following Terms and Conditions of Trading set down the conditions by which the company will provide monitoring services to the customer or to any third party in connection with the services provided to the customer. By accepting these terms and conditions either in writing, verbal agreement or implied, both parties agree to be bound by this agreement.

No terms, representations, additions or variations other than those embodied in this agreement shall be binding on the company unless accepted by the company in writing, for the avoidance of doubt; it is declared that no person other than a Director of the Company has the authority to approve any such variations. Any terms or conditions contained in a customers order shall only be binding on the company in so far as they are not inconsistent with these conditions and do not remove any of the company’s rights under this agreement which shall be constructed in accordance with the Laws of England.

Where the customer instructs the company to carry out monitoring services and a signed copy of these terms and conditions of trading have not been returned to the company within 14 days of commencement of such monitoring services the customer agrees to be deemed to be bound by the terms of this agreement contained herein.

Definitions

(a) The Company shall mean First County Monitoring Alarms Receiving Centre.

(b) ARC shall mean First County Monitoring Alarms Receiving Centre.

(d) Customer shall mean the person, organization, limited company, sole proprietor(s) or partnership or any person who agrees to use the monitoring services of the company.

(e) Premises shall mean the Premises at which the customer’s security systems have been installed.

(f) Subscriber shall mean the occupier or user of the Premises as identified on the Application for Monitoring Form.

(g) Key holder shall mean the nominated representative to be alerted when the security system activates.

(h) Service shall mean the requirements of the customer or subscriber identified in the Application for Monitoring form or agreed elsewhere in writing.

(i) Security Systems shall mean the security system belonging to the customer which the Company has agreed to provide monitor services.

(j) Authorities shall mean the Emergency Services to be alerted.

(k) URN shall mean the Unique Reference Number / Police Scheme Number issued by a Police Authority.

(l) ACPO shall mean the Association of Chief Police Officers.

(m) BT shall mean British Telecommunications PLC.

(n) Service Charge shall mean the charges made by the Company to the customer for the provision of the service provided by the company.

(o) Enabled Date shall mean the date on which monitoring services are enabled to the customer.

(p) Loan Worker shall mean a portable device designed to transmit emergency signals to the ARC

(q) NSI shall mean the National Security Inspectorate

(r) BSI shall mean the British Standards Institute

1. Customer Responsibility

The customer shall provide the company with such information as is required to provide the monitoring services set out in the Application for Monitoring form. The customer shall be responsible for the accuracy of such information and the Company may rely upon the accuracy of the same.

The customer shall without delay notify the company in writing of any changes in any information including key holders, codes or duress words or numbers. No variation to any information or instruction will be accepted unless confirmed in writing prior to the variation taking place.

The company will provide remote monitoring services compliant with the requirements of the National Security Inspectorate (NSI) Codes of Practice, relevant British Standards (BSI), and ACPO Intruder Alarms Policy and in accordance with the operational procedures of First County Monitoring. Details of operational procedures can be downloaded by registered users from www.firstcountymonitoring.co.uk.

Customers shall give authority to the company to operate a policy of alarm signal filtering in accordance with NSI and ACPO requirements currently in force and shall indemnify the company for any loss which may occur as a result of the company’s actions in the filtering of alarm signals. The customer’s attention is drawn to the section covering Liability contained in this agreement. For the purposes of clarity the customer agrees to notify their subscribers in writing of the policy the ARC will apply in respect of the filtering out of alarm signals received from protected premises.

In the event of police response being withdrawn from a security system any activations received will only be passed to nominated key holders. It shall be the customer’s responsibility to notify the ARC in writing of the restoration of police response.

Where the Police Authority issue a URN the company will only attempt to alert the Police to any alarm signals from any Premises where those signals are verified in accordance with current policy. Key holder only will be contacted where the URN has been withdrawn or where no URN has been issued.

The customer agrees that where monitoring of Lone Worker portable alarm systems is carried out the company will only action Alert signals to the Police via the “999” call system or to the Police switchboard of the associated force if available.. Where no URN has been approved for the Lone Worker device the company will not pass calls directly to the Police.

2. Company Responsibilities

The company shall provide the customer and/or subscriber with a monitoring service compliant with the procedures laid down in the current British Standards BS5979 BS8418, PD6662, and DD243, the NSI Codes of Practice, the ACPO Policy and First County Monitoring operational procedures.

The company shall notify appropriate authorities or nominated key holder of signals received.

The company shall maintain a record of any signals received and maintain such for a period of 2 years minimum.

Monitored systems shall be subject to a 7 day period of test to establish from the date of enabling to ensure satisfactory performance before the company will accept responsibility for the monitoring.

Where the company provides out of hours message handling services for the customer all messages will be recorded and passed to the customers nominated member of staff. The customer shall inform the company in writing of callout instructions and of any variations to duty members of staff. The company accepts no liability for loss or damages incurred where a message passed to the customer is not responded to by the customer’s representative.

3. Terms of Payment

All payments for monitoring services are due immediately at the time the service is enabled to the customer.

No credit terms are granted to the customer unless specific terms have been agreed in writing between the parties.

Where a credit facility is agreed in writing the customers account will be issued with a Credit Limit. The customer shall agree to maintain payment terms in accordance with this agreed credit limit. Where the customer does not remain within the terms of payments the company will suspend further monitoring accounts until such a time as the customer account returns within agreed terms.

Where the company provides BT RedCare services, CSL DualCom services, Emizon 21 or any services supported by a network provider the customer shall pay to the company the service charge in full at the time the service is enabled and shall continue to pay the company on each anniversary of the enabled date.

Where a customer is a limited company the director(s) and/or controlling shareholder agree to provide a personal guarantee to the company against the value of unpaid services provided under this agreement resulting from the customer entering bankruptcy, liquidation or ceasing to trade. If such agreement is refused the company will be entitled to stop providing services to the customer and require immediate payment or any charges outstanding.

If full payment is not received by the company in accordance with agreed terms of payment, the company shall be entitled to charge interest on any outstanding amount at the rate of 2% above the HSBC base rate.
The company reserves the right to increase the service charge applied to monitoring services by giving the customer one month written notice setting out the proposed increase and the effective date from which such increase will be applied.

Monitoring services are provided for a minimum period of 12 months from the date the service is enabled to the customer. The customer agrees to pay the initial 12 month monitoring premium in full and no refunds on cancellation will be payable within the initial 12 month monitoring period.

4. Limits of liability

The following provisions set out the entire liability of the company, its servants or agents to the customer or any third party in respect of any breach of its contractual obligations or failure to perform under this agreement and any representation, statement, tortuous act or omission including negligence arising from, or in connection with, this agreement. Any such act for the purpose of this clause shall be known as an event of default.

The Customers attention is in particular drawn to the provision of this clause:

1. The Company’s liability to the customer shall not be limited for death or personal injury resulting from its own, or that of its employees, servants or agents negligence.

2. Breach on the part of the company of any condition or warranty as to title implied by the Sale of Goods Act 1982 or The Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982.

The monitoring premiums charged by the Company in no way reflects the value of the risks monitored on the protected premises and the Company are unable to assess the value of the risk monitored on behalf of the customer which can only be known by the customer, therefore, the Company’s entire liability shall not exceed the sum of £10,000.00 in total, or 10 times the annual monitoring premium, whichever is the lower amount, in respect of any one claim or series of claims of connected occurrences and the company and subscriber agrees to indemnify the company against any losses in excess of this amount.

The Company shall not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by the customer or the Subscriber arising from any defect in, or malfunction of, the Company’s or third party equipment or the telephone lines or any other signaling method used to transport the signals from the protected premises to the Central Station.

The Company shall not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by the customer or the subscriber caused through circumstances beyond the control of the Company howsoever caused.
The Company shall not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by the customer until commissioning of the subscribers system has been completed to the satisfaction of the Company.

The Company shall not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by the customer or subscriber as a result of the Company’s agreed policy of verifying or filtering out false calls in accordance with ACPO or other procedures relating to calls handling management. Details of procedures can be downloaded by registered users at www.firstcountymonitoring.co.uk.

The monitoring services offered by the company are designed to minimise the risk to the customer and subscriber of suffering loss for which it has been designed. No guarantee can be given that the monitoring systems will activate or report correctly at all times and under all circumstances. The company is not an insurance company and has no way of knowing or evaluating the value of any risk which is only known to the customer or subscriber. Consequently because of the extent of any claim that could otherwise be made against the company under the agreement arising from a failure of the company’s systems or from some act of negligence on the part of the company, its employees or agents in comparison to the sum payable by the customer for the monitoring services provided, the company places a limit on its liability as stated in paragraph (a) above.

The customer shall have the sole responsibility to comprehensively insure and protect any property monitored by the company, its contents and persons using the same against “all risks” and thereby indemnifies the company against any such losses in excess of Paragraph (a) above.

The company is not permitted to pass Portable Lone Worker Alert signals directly to the Police without an authorised URN and is only permitted to use the “999” emergency call services or where available the area Police switchboard number. The installer and/or the subscriber will indemnify the company against any injury, loss or damage suffered by the end user which results from any delay in passing calls to the Police.

The company shall not be liable for any loss or damage incurred by the customer or subscriber on any premises monitored by the company using Remote CCTV Systems unless the monitoring transmission equipment and site equipment have been installed, commissioned and operated in accordance with the company’s procedures for RVRC monitoring and accepted by the company.

The company shall not be liable for any loss or damage incurred by the customer or subscriber on any remote CCTV monitored site which have OPEN boundaries.

5. Indemnity

The Installer shall indemnify and keep the Company indemnified against all losses, damage, cost and expenses which the Company may incur, arising out of the attendance at or entry into the client’s premises by the authorities or any person irrespective of whether such attendance or entry was required.

The Installer shall indemnify and keep the Company indemnified against all losses, damage, costs and expenses which the Company may incur, arising from any action necessary by the Company in the Company’s attempts to retrieve any signaling equipment owned by or leased / rented to the Installer.

6. Right of assignment

Under the NSI requirements to provide a Disaster Recovery alternate monitoring service the Company shall be entitled under Disaster Recovery to assign any or all of its liability to a sub contracted NSI Approved ARC.

7. Force Majeure

Where the company is hindered or prevented from carrying out the terms of this agreement by reason of any cause proved to be beyond its control, and in particular (but without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing) by industrial action at its own ARC, war, insurrection, riot, government action, natural disaster, fire, flood, explosion or Act of God, then the company’s obligations under this agreement will be suspended until such cause has ceased to exist.

8. Termination for Breach of Agreement

If the customer shall commit any breach of this agreement or any payment shall be in arrears the company may forthwith by notice in writing to the customer determine this agreement without prejudice to its right to recover any sum of money due to the company hereunder through legal action and the company thereupon at its discretion be entitled to terminate any other agreement that may exist with the customer.

9. Variations

No terms, representations, additions or variations other than those embodied in this agreement shall be binding upon the company unless accepted by the company in writing. Any terms or conditions contained in a customers order shall only be binding on the company in so far as they are not inconsistent with the company’s terms and conditions and do not remove the company’s rights under this agreement.

The agreement shall be constructed in accordance with the Laws of England.

10. Termination

The Company may terminate this agreement at its discretion or terminate any service to one or more of the monitored premises forthwith without notice if:-

The customer commits a breach of his obligations under this agreement
The customer enters into liquidation, receivership or if the Installer is an individual in the case of permanent incapacity or bankruptcy.

Any payments due to the Company from the customer shall be overdue by more than one month.

The Company is unable to retain the rights, consents or permits for the transmission of signals between any of the Premises being monitored and the company’s ARC.

The customer may terminate this monitoring agreement by giving three months prior written notice of termination, subject to the initial monitoring service charges having been paid in advance and the service having being provided for a minimum period of twelve months. No refund will be paid for any unused portion of any monitoring service provided by the company to the customer or the subscriber however; the company may at its sole discretion, and without prejudiced to any rights the company is entitled to, make a pro-rata refund to the customer where network services are provided.

In the event the customer transfers monitored systems to an alternate control centre the company will only release such monitored systems if all payable sums in respect of the transferring systems has been received by the company.

11. Approvals

First County Monitoring is a NSI Gold approved Alarm Receiving Centre and a NSI Gold Approved RVRC.

12. Duration of Agreement

This agreement shall last for one year from the date of acceptance by the parties involved and shall continue from year to year until determined by either party in accordance with the provisions of this agreement. In the absence of a signed agreement between the company and the installer it is agreed that where monitoring services have been provided by the company to the installer in accordance with the terms of this agreement for a consecutive period of 14 days then this will constitute a binding agreement between the parties and the terms of this agreement shall apply.

These Terms and Conditions of Trading are available for downloading from www.firstcountymonitoring.co.uk or by request in writing from the company.

These terms are revised and issued 1st January 2009 and supersede all previously issued agreements.

First County Monitoring, Adelaide House, Vivars Way, Selby, North Yorkshire. Telephone: (01757 213637)