“Having the Secured by Design accreditation helps assure the public that we adhere to standards and take security seriously”
Direct Path Solutions have renewed their membership with Secured by Design, with their OWL - Online Watch Link – system, a platform for the police to engage with residents and businesses.
Winner of two Government awards for innovation & crime reduction, OWL is a shared, secure platform for the public, police and local authorities to maximise the potential of Neighbourhood Watch, Rural Watch, Business Watch and dozens of other schemes, keeping communities safe, helping reduce crime and keeping people informed of what's going on locally.
OWL sends the latest local crime alerts and provides management tools for maintaining and expanding watches. 13,000 alerts and updates were published in 2022 resulting in 38 million emails, SMS and calls being sent to the public. Alerts can be targeted precisely to a single building or widely to a whole county and everything in between. In Hertfordshire, 38% of all homes are signed up on OWL and in some London boroughs as many as 20% of homes are. OWL has featured on BBC Crimewatch, BBC News, and more recently on BBC Frontline Fightback.
The Secured by Design accredited OWL system is cost effective and has evidence behind it showing that it truly works, helping to keep communities safe, people informed of what's going on locally and in many incidents reducing and even solving crimes and assisting with the safe return of a number of missing vulnerable people across the UK. You can find out more about these successes here.
Ruari Robertson, Secured by Design, said: “I am delighted that OWL have renewed their valued membership for a further year. They provide a useful tool for their communities to use in communicating with the police, as well as keeping up to date with local trends”.
Gary Fenton, Direct Path Solutions, said: “Public surveys have repeatedly shown that in rural and urban communities, the use of OWL increases the public’s confidence in the police and makes them feel safer. Having the Secured by Design accreditation helps assure the public that we adhere to standards and take security seriously.”
Find out more about the OWL System, which has achieved Secured by Design’s Police Preferred Specification, here.
