British Security Industry Association SEMS chairman Tony Allen said: “The statement came after discussion among UK member companies and was endorsed unanimously by all members present.
“The UK industry has spent an enormous amount of time and money to arrive at standards which will benefit all stakeholders in our industry, not just a few.”
The BSIA is in support of a clear, Europe-wide testing and certification regime, and is only “seeking approvals to EN standards through the Certalarm process”.
The full text of the BSIA SEMS statement is below.
BSIA Security Equipment Manufacturers Section statement
The BSIA Security Equipment Manufacturers are fully committed to a European “one stop” testing and certification regime to European product standards only. SEMS does not support any test and certification regime that adds extra requirements to the European product standards.
The reason why SEMS have taken this firm stance is that SEMS members produce high quality, innovative security products that are sold not only in the UK, but also into Europe and the rest of the world.
The SEMS members have to ensure that their products meet the national requirements in all the countries in which they sell their products to ensure they meet the individual national regulations.
This can mean having their products tested by a national test house to guarantee individual national conformity.
Sell more easily into European countries
With the advent of the European Union and the lowering of trade barriers across Europe, manufacturers should be able to sell more easily into other European countries.
However, as there were no pan European security equipment product standards and EU member countries had their own national security product standards, the market did not change.
In the 1980s the European standards body for Electro technical standards, CENELEC, started writing European security standards (including product standards) and today there are many European security product standards in circulation across Europe.
The BSIA SEMS section saw this as the catalyst for removing the barriers of individual member States’ national requirements across Europe for the sale of their products.
European level certification
However to ensure the European consumer had confidence in the security products then all products would be required to be third party tested and certificated on a European level.
SEMS members are currently required to get their products third party tested and certificated by individual test houses in many of the European member States and this can be costly.
Even with the advent of European standards SEMS member products still have to undergo many different third party testing and certification regimes even if the test houses are testing to the same European standard.
The BSIA view is that this situation is unacceptable as it is a barrier to trade for all European security product manufacturers in Europe.
Achieving single certification
The BSIA as a member of Euralarm (Association of Manufacturers and Installers of Fire and Security Systems – www.euralarm.org) have been looking to see how a single pan European third party testing and certification regime for security products can be achieved.
In 2010 a new organisation was formed through the European Accreditation agency (EA) call Certalarm (www.certalarm.org).
Certalarm is based in Belgium and the aim of the Certalarm certification scheme is to issue a certificate to products that have been third party tested to European standards and for this certificate to be accepted in all European countries without the need of product retesting in each country.
This should mean “one stop testing and certification” throughout Europe with the Certalarm mark as a quality mark for European security products.
EC support
It is not just the BSIA and Euralarm who are looking for a quality mark for security products.
The European Commission, in its response to the European Security Research and Innovation Forum report in December 2009, stated that a competitive European security industry is a pre-requisite for future EU security and the EU must address the fragmentation of the security market by analysing ways to speed up security certification and standardisation work with an emphasis on a “European Security Label”.
The Certalarm scheme fits this requirement for security products.
Earlier this year the European Commission held a public consultation on an “Industrial Policy for the Security Industry”.
The results of this consultation are no published and the clear view put forward by responders was:
“The clear added value of a European-wide certification regime. The main expected benefits being:
- Reduction of the duplication of certification procedures
- Reduction of the administration burden for the supply and demand side
- Enhancement of the competitiveness and growth of the EU security industry and
- Support to creation of and end to end European Security approach from research to commercialisation.”
The BSIA looks forward to seeing the output of the consultation being used as part of the EU ‘Communication Industrial Policy for the Security Industry’ planned for publication in early 2012.
Level market
Any third party testing and certification scheme should only be to the European security products standards.
All organisations have the ability to propose experts to take part in European standards committees or to have the ability to comment on the draft European product standards. Therefore only the European standards should be used by test houses to test products.
Achieving one stop testing and certification throughout Europe will enable a European quality mark to be introduced, reduce unnecessary multiple certification costs and thereby enable all manufacturers (Large and SME) to compete in a level market.
It will also allow manufacturers to increase funding into research and development of new innovative products.
Unanimous support
To conclude the BSIA SEMS position; SEMS is committed to its involvement in the production of European product standards and the BSIA SEMS position is firm on this issue in that testing and certification should be to the European product standards only (or to the relevant (BSI) British product standard if a European product standard is not available) and that there should be no additional third party testing requirements added to the European product standards by any organisation.
At the last meeting of the BSIA SEMS the industry unanimously reiterated its support for this position and would only be seeking approvals to EN standards through the Certalarm process.