Unicorn Voice commended at Fire and Security Matters Awards 2025

The Fire and Security Matters Awards, the ceremony for which took place on 5 June at the CBS Arena in Coventry, are the largest fire and security awards in the UK, attracting entries and participation from across the two sectors.

Unicorn Voice was commended by the independent Judging Panel and is the first voice alarm product to have been judged a major innovation in the four-year history of these awards.

Jeremy Kirkup, sales director at Vox Ignis, commented: “We’re delighted to see Unicorn Voice recognised in this way. It has been a hugely significant development project that has delivered a genuinely market-leading and changing PAVA system.”

Kirkup continued: “We market Unicorn Voice as the ‘Unified PAVA’ as it integrates voice alarm, public address, fire telephones, disabled refuge, visual alarm devices, background music and assistance alarms. It’s configured for a wide range of sites and to be simple and clear to specify, design and install.”

Further, Kirkup noted: “Unicorn Voice’s touchscreen-driven architecture will be familiar to fire alarm professionals. This is a major point of difference in the voice alarm market, which is often based around legacy and over-complicated solutions requiring specialists. We believe that it’s also class-leading in terms of its audio quality, resilience and sustainability.”

Distributed system

Unicorn Voice eschews the expensive, rack-based and ‘single point of failure’ approach of older PAVA systems in favour of a distributed system running on a certified peer to peer, dual redundant and fault tolerant network.

Amplifiers and speaker taps are easily tuned to room sizes meaning that significantly less power is wasted and audio performance will be maximised.

Unicorn Voice is approved to EN 54-16 by UL, another world-first for Vox Ignis, and it’s also one of the few systems fully compliant with the latest (ie 2023) edition of BS 5839-8.

Mark Sennett, CEO of Western Business Media, stated: “The Fire and Security Matters Awards were created to recognise and promote excellence in the UK’s fire and security industries, which have global reach with products installed widely around the world. These awards and the Judging Panel are deliberately independent and the entry criteria strict, ensuring the credibility of all decisions. I’m delighted for Vox Ignis and all of the other recognised businesses in 2025 and look forward to tracking their successes going forward.”

Designed and manufactured in the UK and sold under the Vox Ignis name and leading OEM brands worldwide, the company’s products amplify the safety of millions of people and buildings each and every day.

*Further information is available online at www.vox-ignis.com