Dear Capri Residents,
Following our note to the community a week or so back about the allocation of a vehicle to our area, members of the Capri NHW Committee had a follow up meeting with Fidelity ADT on Friday to clarify a number of key issues around the allocation of the vehicle.
We met with Adrian Good (responsible for the entire Cape regional area), Brendon Berry (South District community development manager) and Brent Amos (operations). As in our prior meeting with Jade Hanning, we came away impressed with the forthright nature of their approach as well as their willingness to engage and make a success of their acquisition of YMA.
In short, as Capri NHW and area residents – there is no formal agreement or obligations we need to enter into for the vehicle allocation. There are some brief guidelines/needs, none of which are unusual and some of which we do already. It is worth noting that aside from the costs of the telephone (which CNHW already carry), all else is going to be done at Fidelity ADT’s expense, with no costs incurred by Capri NHW or additional costs to ex-YMA clients.
- Provision of a 24/7 contact number and cellphone that will remain in the vehicle for residents to call the officer on duty (we already have this – currently “personned” by Vivian, so will be handed over to the Fidelity team). Thus the existing 24/7 CNHW number remains just as before, except there is an officer in a vehicle on the other end.
- Fidelity will be putting up their own signage in our area indicating their presence as well as the fact that there is a dedicated response vehicle in the area.
- In the interests of being community spirited, the Capri NHW committee proposed to Fidelity that the vehicle cover both Capri and Faerie Knowe. This has been discussed with Faerie Knowe NHW, who are supportive of the initiative. It is worth noting that this vehicle is in addition to the deployment that was originally planned by Fidelity ADT in their amalgamation with YMA – so this is an extra car on the road, a real gain for safety and security in our area.
- The vehicle will primarily have Fidelity ADT branding on it, but to identify it as the vehicle allocated to Capri and Faerie Knowe, it will have some unique branding to identify it as such (Barbara is working on some designs at the moment). All the new ADT vehicles deployed in the next few days will have both Fidelity ADT and YMA branding on them.
- The old YMA control centre will remain as is for the next two weeks or so, after which it will be converted to a monitoring hub. This hub will employ the existing YMA team and the hope is that all monitoring of CCTV and LPR in the valley could be done here to assist in improving responses to incidents. Fidelity have also indicated that they plan to install additional LPR at their cost on key roads in the valley.
- If the Capri/FK vehicle gets two calls at the same time, with one from a client and the other a non-client, it is going to respond to the Fidelity client first, while calling for backup to assist in the other instance. This is no different to how YMA have been operating in helping Capri residents over the past few years, but it is worth being aware of. At the end of the day, any SSP has to service its paying clients first.
- As the vehicle was ordered to Fidelity specification a day after our initial meeting with them, the firm has indicated that they expect it to be on the ground on a 24/7 basis from 14/15 September. Until then, the position will be as we have been used to with YMA, while from the 10 there will be a vehicle operating in the Capri/FK area during the day, albeit without the detailed branding.
The proof of the investment they are making is going to be in how they deliver services to their clients. With Fidelity retaining the YMA hub and on the ground teams, they have a great base to start with.
Remember, CNHW is not a client of Fidelity ADT or any other security company – individual homeowners in Capri and Faerie Knowe are the folks who sign up to and pay a security service provider (SSP) on a monthly basis. The choice of which SSP anyone chooses remains with them. Obviously if for whatever reason Fidelity ADT client numbers in our area drop substantially, they might choose to review the commitment they have made to their client base in our community, as is their right.
It is also worth noting that some 10 minutes before the Capri NHW committee got the firm vehicle commitment from Fidelity ADT, we had an offer from Colin Reeves of Combat Force to deploy a vehicle in Capri if we were able to persuade 220 Capri residents to sign service agreements with his company. In light of having the firm commitment from Fidelity ADT, the Capri NHW committee engaged on the offer from Combat Force and reverted to Mr Reeves on Sunday 26th August. In our reply, we thanked him for his offer, but declined it at this point and indicated that in light of all our efforts this year trying to get 100 new clients for YMA (we managed to get 45), in essence these extra sign ups meant that as an area we are already meeting the required number of contracts with Fidelity ADT (when combined with ex YMA clients) to secure a vehicle, with no further sign ups or conditions attached. The vehicle allocation from Fidelity is in essence the payback we as a community are getting for having supported YMA in the past few years.
Finally, the Fidelity ADT team have indicated that if the community would find it useful, they are happy that a community meeting be arranged at which they could respond to queries and concerns from residents. We will put up a poll on our various forums to gauge the interest for such a meeting, and if there is sufficient interest, we will pass this on to Fidelity to make the needed arrangements (which we can communicate to all of you).
Kind regards
The Capri Neighbourhood Watch team