We have seen a significant increase in claims regarding home and office invasions recently. This could be due to the surge in unemployment rates caused by the pandemic, resulting in people becoming increasingly desperate and turning to crime as a solution. As cherished members of our Barker family, we value your safety and wellbeing and have gathered several preventative pointers below, to mitigate the risk of the same happening to you.

• Ensure your office premises have proper security measures in place with a credible armed response company – this could prevent you from suffering a major financial loss or the mere inconvenience of a break-in.
• Ensure that you set your alarm when you leave your home unoccupied for any reason.
• Notify a trustworthy neighbour that you will be away for the day and to look out for any suspicious ongoings.
• Lock all your valuables (jewellery, watches or electric devices) away if you have contractors coming to your property to avoid unnecessary theft. Remember that your insurance policy does not cover you for items that simply “vanish” from your home as a result of negligence.

Access and Keys

• Lock all access doors into your residence when you go to bed at night. This is applicable to those living in secure estates too, as residents seem to create a false sense of security living within “protected walls”. Such establishments have recently become a hot target amongst criminals: transgressors somehow gain access into the estate and enter homes through open windows or doors, taking as many valuables as they are able.
• Identify keys by means of codes rather than writing out clearly which gate or door they below to.
• Never hide keys in obvious places, such as in pot plants or under doormats.
• Keys in the keyhole on the inside of the front or back door should be turned to avoid easy removal.
• Never allow strangers to handle keys or look at key numbers.
• Change locks when keys are lost.
• Remove keys from doors when leaving.

Security Lights

• Install security lights on the outside of the house to improve the physical protection of a property.
• The lights should be directed away from the house and must allow the occupants to use the windows without being observed from outside.
• Be aware of possible shadows and blind spots.

Safety Precautions

• Ensure all doors are locked at all times, and that windows are closed when you are not at home.
• Ensure tools such as axes, spades, picks, ladders, and so on, that can be used in an attack, are locked away when not in use.
• Vary your daily routine.
• You should not be visible in the bedroom from the outside when you are asleep.
• Always keep a torch nearby at night and when you use it, ensure that you do not reveal your position.
• If you are unsure about the security status of your home after returning from work or an outing, do not enter your home.
• Identify relatively safe places of refuge, such as a storeroom.
• Ensure that you have a good relationship with your neighbors so that you will be in a good position to support and help each other.

Alert area patrols, armed response, complex, and estate security if you observe any questionable behavior. Trust your instincts: if it doesn’t look or feel right, it more than likely isn’t. Err on the side of caution and have it tended to by security professionals sooner rather than later.