What would you do ?

nina to be honest I would have pulled the duvet over my ears and gone back to sleep. I doubt if many burglars are up and about at 6am.
If your neighbour oh lives there part-time it would be considerate of him to link his alarm to the local police so that if it goes off, they have to investigate it, not you.
Would you really want to confront a burglar, anyway?

Only

Definitely not, that's why I waited until it stopped. I assumed anyone would have scarpered by then
I didn't want to leave the place unsecured though.

Do you have a key to his property? My neighbours and I hold keys to each others properties and we always let each other know when we are going to be away. In the past when a neighbours alarm has gone off my DH would go and investigate but if that were to happen now and I knew they were away I think I would call the police (or another neighbour!)

If from past experience have had situations involving a neighborour at my previous location.
The person living above thought he ran things where I lived and not the Housing Association that own the flats.
I did a 999 last January and the person above told a different story to my own, later that day I was viisited by the housing officer with a PCSO.
And was advised to ring 999 as to abuse etc, it continued for a month or two after , but the tenant still thought he ruled.
But what he was unaware of I had made plans to move , to sheltered accomadation, although changes this year I registtered with Anchor where I know live in one of its places,and the second bit also reapplied for housing through local district council this today requires more info from applicants than in past years.
I gather the tenant, who was on a100% benfits has deciced to shack up elsewhere so to speak.
Today these on benefits get it all paid direct to them ,and have to pay rent etc out of what they get , think if no rent is paid to housing associiation he will be out.
But yes 999 , you never know.
Mick

I rang 999 when our neighbours alarm went off and they were away. The police refused to come - unless I was sure someone was inside the property. I wasn't prepared to go and find out!

It turns out the police only come if you pay for a link to the police station. Our neighbours are now linked to a private security firm.

If it's an unusual occurrence then I would have called the local police station - I'd be surprised if a 999 call these days would result in a squad car coming out to check a ringing alarm.

Nina for future, make sure you have the owner's phone number so that you can inform him and leave him to deal with it.

The alarm in a neighbouring house goes off about once a month. The owner is often working away and will not leave a phone number because she doesn't want to be troubled! It is not linked to the Police, so I wonder why she bothers to set it, maybe just to scare away any potential thief. The cause is usually a momentary power cut which happens a lot, but if there is no obvious reason I still do not investigate. It is nothing but an irritation for the neighbourhood, usually sounding at night for 20 minutes at a time.

Thanks, I will inform the people who live a few houses away on the other side. They have a key and presumably a phone number.

We had a burglar alarm fitted when we moved to our current house and paid for it to be monitored but the only time there was an attempted break in the neighbours, several of them, responded well before the police did so in the end we cancelled the monitoring.

Modern alarms should not be set off by animals or the wind. if someone has animals in the house they should be properly separated from the rest of the house. Although we are not pet owners we made the kitchen a sensor free area so that a future owner could have a cat door fitted and pets could go in their without disturbing the alarm.

If you are connected to the police station and have 2 false alarms the police will refuse to respond to any other alarm calls at the same address.

My rule would be that if the alarm has not gone off before I would ring the police but if it kept going off on false alarms I would complain to the council under the noise abatement legislation.

Alarms go off often in our street, quite a few properties with grown up kids living with parents. Friday and Saturday nights are the worst, parents go to bed and obviously set the alarm, kids come in at 3am and trip the alarm. My neighbour goes on holiday often and we have had to go in our PJs to turn off alarm, they have the garage door alarmed and we get opportunist thieves trying the doors.

A friend of mine that was a milkman said that a lot of crime happened round the time he did his milk round...4/5/6 o'clock. In fact he had to give up his job because something happened to him [can't recall what it was]. If I'm in any doubt about anything I always phone 999, thinking that even if nothing is done about it at least I've tried. I'd certainly not go to the house on my own[ in our cul de sac if an alarm goes off there's usually a couple of people that will do so, as we all tell each other if we're going to be away and we've all got contact numbers if anything happens]. Better property to be lost than someone injured trying by getting involved. Although we did have one elderly lady living on her own and we always went straight round if anything looked untoward. I did once hear a noise downstairs and went down to see what was happening before I'd even woken up properly, then wondered what on earth I would have done if anyone had been there. And I've just resolved to make sure I have my mobile next to the bed at night [something I always forget to do].

If a garage door is alarmed and goes off when opportunists try to open it then the owners should change the protection from sensors on the door to a sensor on the wall that will go off only if the garage door is actually opened.

In the 18 years we have had our alarm we have had only two false alarms, one when squirrels got into the roof and bit through the alarm cable. it was the middle of the night, we were home and the alarm, thankfully only went off indoors. The second time we were having building work done that meant the kitchen was temporally very drafty and on a windy day the draft made the curtains in the hall move - and that set the alarm off.

Our alarm went off when we left a helium balloon in the sitting room. It started bobbing about in the warm air and set the alarm off. Fortunately we had only popped to the shops! X

Just found this out. You can get your burglar alarm wired up to your mobile phone so that if you're away from home your phone will go off and you can then use it to look at what's on the cctv camera and phone the local police [I think I've got that right]. Mind you, it's not cheap to do.

A shame it cannot be connected to a microphone in the house so if you see anybody in the house you can speak to them and hopefully frightemn them witless.