In article ,
" writes:

I used to have a maintained and monitored system in a previous
property, and my alarm company was a member of NACOSS http://www.nacoss.org.uk/

IIRC, NACOSS rules say that alarm companies must hand over the
engineer code to the homeowner free of charge, if the homeowner ends
the maintainance contract.

That will depend on the homeowner owning the alarm.
They rarely do if they dealt with an alarm company.

If you are paying someone to buy and install an alarm for you, then
you shouldn't pay until you have been handed over all the installation
information such as instructions, codes, and programming details
specific for your particular installation. Such a system can be
monitored but cannot have emergency services callout if the customer
has programming access to it. Whilst monitoring with emergency services
callout is required, then programming would have to be withheld from
the customer and the system must be on a maintenance contract.

If you are paying for an alarm service (which is most the common),
then you are renting the alarm, just like you used to have to rent a
phone handset from the GPO, as part of their service. Such a system
can be monitored with emergency services callout, because alarm
company are responsible for the programming and design of the system.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]