During these dark winter nights and over the Christmas holiday season, it makes sense to secure your home. We asked Secured By Design (SBD), the national police crime prevention initiative, to provide us with some practical advice about home security.
SBD works with Police forces, architects, developers and local authority planners around the UK to design out crime in new-build developments at the planning stage using proven crime prevention techniques. These measures include the layout and landscaping, such as to achieve lots of natural surveillance and the absence of alley-ways and hiding places. In addition, SBD seeks to improve the physical security of buildings, such as using doors, windows and locks which meet our police accreditation standards to be sufficiently robust to resist physical attack from opportunist burglars.
We have already written about installing garage and pass doors manufactured and installed by Ballymena business, Garage Door Systems. Many of their products are approved by Secured By Design. Read that article here.
Secure Your Home – Advice from Secured By Design
Criminals are known to take advantage of darker evenings to target properties that look unoccupied. In this article we look at some of the practical steps you can take to secure your home and possessions.
Inside your home:
- use timers on inside lights to come on when it gets dark. Change the rooms used and times to avoid predictability.
- keep your curtains open during the daytime because closing them may suggest your home is unoccupied.
- leave your front door and vehicle keys in a secure place out of sight, and reach of your front door, to prevent a potential burglar ‘fishing’ for the keys through the letterbox.
Outside your home:
- keep plants and hedges trimmed at the front so your home can be seen clearly from the street.
- if you are away, ask a trusted neighbour to watch out for your home. Ask them to make sure your post is pushed through the letterbox.
- install low energy dusk-to-dawn lighting. Burglars don’t like operating where they can be seen.
Christmas gifts:
- keep your gifts out of sight until as close to Christmas as possible.
- mark your expensive presents, like a laptop or digital camera, with a property marking kit. Also record the frame numbers of new bicycles.
- keep a photo record of jewellery and store the images with your insurance documents.
- remember empty packaging and boxes left outside your home for rubbish collection after Christmas are an immediate giveaway that you have new goods inside.
By taking some simple steps, you can greatly reduce the likelihood of your home being targeted.
For further information about Secured By Design and more advice to help you secure your home, visit their website here. Phone 0203 8623 999 or email enquiries@police-cpi.co.uk.
You can also watch a short video about SBD here.