Top tips for keeping your home safe and secure

According to the Office for National Statistics, victim-based crimes have decreased in the last ten years with a few exceptions such as shoplifting and theft from a person. Data reported by CrimeRate suggests that home burglary specifically has decreased by 7% in 2024 compared with 2023. All of this is good news for homeowners concerned about break-ins, but of course the risk hasn’t disappeared completely. In August 2024, CrimeRate also stated that 234,200 crime reports for burglary had still been made to police forces in England and Wales.

It’s never nice to think about people breaking into your home, but it is worth taking some precautionary measures to avoid the financial and emotional distress.

Here are some of our top tips for securing your home.

 1. Lock up!

Did you know that 70% of burglaries take place with the offender entering through an unlocked door? More people lock their doors overnight but if we are home in the daytime, we assume it is safe to leave our homes unlocked. However, with 40% of burglaries happening in daylight hours, and 50% happening while someone is home, the advice is to keep doors locked, whether you are inside the property or not.

A lot of burglaries are carried out by opportunistic burglars that try a door handle to see if they can gain access, so it is worth keeping doors locked at all times. It is useful to keep keys close to the door in case of a fire, or make sure everyone in the home knows where the keys are kept, but by locking up you are preventing strangers from being able to easily enter your home.   

 2. Close windows and keep tools locked away

As well as unlocked doors, the opportunistic burglar will be keeping an eye out for any other chance of entering a home. Make sure you keep your windows closed and preferably locked throughout the day. If you need to air a room, you can usually leave a small gap while still being able to lock the window and prevent anyone from being able to fit in through the open window. It is especially important to avoid leaving windows wide open if they are situated above a first-floor roof, or any other potential access point.

It is also worth looking around the outside of your property for any tools or implements that burglars could use to break into your home. If you keep tools in a shed in the garden, make sure the shed is kept locked, and if you can, keep ladders out of sight and inaccessible too.

 3. Install deterrents

Despite the brash nature of many burglaries, most burglars don’t want to get caught and so will avoid drawing too much attention to themselves by setting off an alarm, approaching a property with working security lights, or risk getting caught on video doorbells or CCTV. Installing any of these measures on the outside of your property can act as a deterrent to opportunistic burglars.  

 4. Don’t advertise your valuables or your holidays!

A lot of us enjoy sharing our lives with friends and family on social media but be careful what you post online. Don’t advertise that you are on holiday as you are sitting in the airport waiting to leave. If the wrong person sees the post or hears about it from someone else innocently discussing your holiday plans, they will know your home is unoccupied for at least a few days. Similarly, the police warn not to post pictures of expensive jewellery or other household items online, because you can’t guarantee that these pictures won’t be distributed beyond your trusted friends and family.

 5. Choose superior performing windows and doors

If you have older windows and doors in your property, it might be worth considering an upgrade to make them more secure. Look out for PAS24 certification on any new windows and doors, as well as Secured by Design. It is also worth talking to your home improvement company about the measures taken by the manufacturers they use to make products more secure – for example what testing to do they put their products through? And how do their products perform when it comes to security specifically?

The best of the best aluminium windows and doors

Aluminium windows and doors are a great starting point for secure home improvements because the material is inherently strong and so cannot be easily manipulated. However, frames alone will not keep burglars out. It is the combination of frame, glass unit, locks and hardware that create a secure window or door. Reynaers Aluminium makes sure we offer the highest of standards through simulations and testing with different components.

Using internal and external experts, all of our windows and doors are subject to a combination of simulations and tests that bring out the very best in our products. The largest private test centre in the industry, located at our HQ in Belgium, allows us to test, tweak and test again to achieve excellent results. And with the help of specialised external test facilities around the world, we continuously improve our products across the range.

You can read more about Secured by Design from Reynaers Aluminium here and learn more about our PAS 24 certification here. And to work with an installation company you know you can trust to deliver safe and secure windows and doors without any compromise to stylish aesthetics, find your local Reynaers at Home Installer today.  

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