Security When Away

Des Conway has over 20 years security experience, which combines police service with commercial security consultancy. He is experienced in undertaking security reviews of domestic and commercial properties, delivering reports highlighting vulnerabilities, and recommending simple, affordable and achievable countermeasures.

Share |

Remember Security

Most people go away for a few weeks’ holiday each year. When you are away and your house is unattended it is vulnerable. There are some basic precautions which you should take.

Remember Security

In the excitement of planning your holiday remember that you should be making your holiday arrangements with the security of your house in mind.

Think ahead – deliveries

When approaching holiday times, in everything you do remember that you are planning to be away between given dates. Avoid ordering anything that may be delivered when you are away. When you do place orders, make sure that even if the delivery is later than the suppliers have promised, any goods you order will all be delivered before you go away.

If you have any doubts that a delivery will be made before you leave, or want to order something that will arrive while you are away, ask a neighbour or family member if you can have it delivered to their house.

Don’t under any circumstances have it delivered to your home address. Packages waiting on doorsteps are tempting to a casual thief, as well as advertising to a whole range of people that you are not at home and may not be around for a few days.

Leaving notes

No matter what the excuse, never, ever leave a note on the door. Notes such as ‘Milkman – we are on holiday – no milk until 18th August’, or perhaps ‘On holiday until 18th August ALL Deliveries to Number 7 Please’ are a gift to criminals. Remember even a note saying ‘gone to shops back in five minutes’ may be enough to tempt a burglar.

Leaving notes – countermeasures

Arrange matters so that a note will not be necessary, by making sure that deliveries are all made before you go and regular deliveries are cancelled.
If you know and trust the milkman tell him that you don’t want any milk until the 18th of August, but don’t ever leave a note advertising that fact to everyone.
If you don’t know or trust the milkman, consider NOT cancelling the milk! It will cost you a few pounds but as long as you can arrange for a relative or trusted neighbour to collect your daily milk delivery and use it while you are away, the milkman will be none the wiser.
If possible arrange for a trusted relative to collect the mail. Consider removing any mail basket inside the letterbox for the duration of your absence, particularly if you receive a lot of mail!

Junk mail and circulars

Your letterbox and front step are important to maintaining your security. For a few weeks before your departure keep an eye on what is delivered. Not just the usual post and milk, it is the ‘unwanted deliveries’ that could be a problem. Free newspapers, circulars, flyers and pizza advertisements all flow through my letterbox or more often are just dumped onto the doorstep. I haven’t asked for any of them, I have no interest in them and they all go straight into the rubbish bin. Unfortunately, these are the deliveries that can cause you problems.

If not collected and disposed of, within a few days they could overflow your letterbox and doorstep, cascading out to blow around the garden for all to see. This is a clear indication that you are not at home and, by the time the doorstep is stacked up with this rubbish you clearly haven’t been there for some days. That will attract the attention of the local criminals.

In my area a free newspaper is published and supposed to be delivered every Wednesday, but it is actually usually delivered on a Saturday or Sunday by youngsters who cannot be bothered to push it though a letterbox. They fling it onto the doorstep in any weather, where it either gets soaked or blows around the garden. Worse than that it frequently contains other mail shots, which the ill-advised advertisers have paid to be delivered on the issue date.

I contacted the circulation manager of the publisher to complain, but she wasn’t interested. I tried to contact somebody with more seniority in her organisation, but I was brushed off, so I contacted some of the advertisers. I collected a handful of the delayed mail shots in the next issue and looked through them. Some were advertising special promotions and offers that had finished by the time the paper was delivered so I began calling those companies. I asked about the offers to check that they had expired, then asked if they knew that their advertising material had been circulated late, after their closing date. I asked if they were happy that their advertising handouts were dumped on doorsteps and not pushed through letterboxes. I asked if they cared that because of the late delivery and careless handling households by their association with the publishers of the free paper people were feeling annoyed with them and their products. I gave my name and told them I would be willing to support any claim they may want to make against the distributors.

Within a week I had a phone call from a smarmy man who introduced himself as a senior executive with the publishers of the free paper. He assured me that the past problems had been resolved and that a number of delivery staff had been disciplined. For a couple of weeks things were fine then they went back to their old ways, this time the free paper took my call, and this time they removed me from their circulation list, so I am not bothered with their annoying and forest denuding trash any more!

Whatever you do, make sure that while you have carefully managed and cancelled all deliveries this junk mail doesn’t spoil all your good work. Where possible get somebody to check the property each day, and if possible spend a few hours there, to make the place look lived in. Remember to make absolutely sure that they secure the house when they leave though!

Junk mail and circulars – countermeasures

Try to make sure that your mail is cleared each day while you are away. If a few bulky circulars are forced through your letterbox, they can block future deliveries. The postman may take new deliveries back to the sorting office to await collection when you return, but people delivering free newspapers and junk mail circulars will almost certainly simply dump new deliveries at and around the front door and doorstep.
I did see a house that had a special delivery slot for circulars and free newspapers. Actually it was a large box with a lid and a wide access slot, sited near the front door. The owner told me that inside the box was a plastic crate. A couple of times a week he would take the crate out of the ‘circulars mail box’ remove each item and throw it into his recycling bin. He only checked it in case some genuine post had been put there in error.
If you would like to try to stop junk mail being sent to you by direct marketing organisations, you could try contacting the Mail Preference Service. Please see www.mpsonline.org.uk for details and to register your desire to be excluded from junk mail postings. It doesn’t stop all junk mail but it considerably reduces it. You will need a valid email address to complete the on-line process and they warn that it can take up to four months to have full effect, www.fpsonline.org.uk for details and to register your desire to be excluded from junk fax advertising, www.tpsonline.org.uk for details and to register your desire to be excluded from unsolicited telephone advertising).
A similar organisation which deals with telephone marketing is the Telephone Preference Service, which can be contacted on 0845 0700707 or by emailing tps@dma.org.uk. All you have to do is register your phone numbers and you should be excluded from most UK telephone marketing.

Central heating

If you are going on a winter holiday you may have to leave your heating on so that the water pipes are protected from frost damage. A low setting will not use too much fuel, but it will prevent the pipes from freezing and keep the house safe and comfortable for your return.

Lights on timers

Whenever you are away, you should try to make the house look as occupied and lived in as possible. Any action you can take to make it appear as though somebody is around will be an extra deterrent to a criminal who is considering targeting your house.

A number of manufacturers supply electrical timers. They plug into an electrical socket and you can plug a light or other device into them. The timers then work off the electricity, and at set times programmed by you, they will switch the device plugged into them on and off. So you can make a light come on and go off at times you have set.

The better electrical timers have a battery backup function. Without the battery, in a power cut the timer could lose its programmed operation and stop working, or carry on working with a clock that was running a few hours late. That could make lights come off and on in the early hours of the morning, which would attract the attention of criminals rather than put them off.

Lights on timers – countermeasures

Make sure that you only buy safe and approved electrical timers, something that will not cause a fire while they are unattended.
Use them sparingly. Don’t make your house look like seaside illuminations with all sorts of things switching on and off at different times.
Make sure that you have some lights that can be operated by the timers, such as standard and table lamps.
The timer light will look better if you can get a relative to go to your house and draw the curtains in the evening and open them again in the morning when they come to collect the milk and gather up the post, etc.
Use them strategically, and make sure that you plan their use. I suggest that their use should follow your lifestyle pattern. For example, if you wake up at six each morning, have a bedroom light that comes on at six. If you sit in the lounge from five until ten then go to bed, I would suggest that the timers are used to switch the lounge lights on at five and switch them off at ten, while the bedroom timer light comes on at ten to ten and goes off at quarter past ten. This should give the indication of the normal pattern of use, so to a casual observer there is no clue that you are away. Depending on your window dressing you may have to ask the relative or neighbour who is checking for junk mail to make their visit in the early evening when they can close the curtains, then come back in the morning to open them again.

Radio talk stations

Just as the lights above give the illusion of occupancy, leaving a radio on could help your illusion, depending on how you use it. I put a radio onto one of the timer switches, and arrange for the radio to be tuned to a talk station. Music stations are OK, but an intruder won’t be fooled into thinking that 20 current pop stars are staying at your house if he hears their music. On the other hand, if you tune the radio to a talk station, all he will be able to hear from the outside is muffled voices, from which he cannot be sure if there are actually people in the house talking.

That uncertainty should be enough to make him look for an easier and safer target down the road.

Radio talk station – countermeasures

Buy or keep a timer switch to operate the radio.
Tune the radio to a station that you know will be all talk.
News and current affairs discussion channels are acceptable, because the participants are usually fairly unknown. A channel with a well-known and recognisable celebrity talking won’t fool the criminals.
Tune the radio accurately, as a crackling badly tuned hissing station will not fool anyone.
Set the volume to a subdued conversational level, don’t be tempted to turn it up so that the criminals ‘will definitely be able to hear it’. If it is too loud they will know what it is.

The garden

Don’t forget that your garden can tell tales on you too. An uncut and overgrown lawn is very obvious to anyone passing by. If the hanging baskets are wilting through lack of water, or weeds have invaded the flowerbeds, you are giving the criminals more indications that nobody is home. If you usually trim the hedge every Sunday then suddenly it is left to grow for two weeks in August it will be noticed and the criminals will draw their own conclusions from the change!

Garden based evidence alone can point to a family on holiday. Add the extra information about the lack of activity in the house, the milkman doesn’t stop there any more, there aren’t any kids playing in the garden, and you begin to see that it is quite difficult to hide your absence from anyone who regularly passes by. It might take them ten days to notice, but eventually the evidence builds up to the inescapable conclusion that you are away and the house is empty.

Garden – countermeasures

Arrange for a neighbour to water the hanging baskets, tubs and borders so that the plants don’t wilt and die, drawing attention to the empty house.
Make sure that you give the lawn and hedge an extra trim the day before you go on holiday. Pull out the weeds and water the garden thoroughly. That will delay the onset of an unkempt appearance.
Possibly arrange for a friend to enter the house and make it look lived in for a few hours every now and then. I know of one lady who asks her neighbour to go into her house a couple of times a week to tend to the house plants, then to watch television for a few hours, so that people can see life and activity in the house.
If you have children, you may ask your friend or neighbour to move things around when they are there. That can be done while watering the garden or mowing the grass to make it look innocent but the idea is to move children’s bikes and toys, etc. If the kids’ bikes and toys stay in one place for a week or two it will be noticed, move things around and the house and garden look normal and in use.
Make sure sheds are locked, cars are in garages with secondary security devices fitted and that the garages themselves are secured.
Make sure that all ladders, tools and any equipment that could be stolen or used to break into your home, are securely locked away.

Refuse collection

When making your arrangements don’t forget the dustman. Here is another task for that visiting relative or friendly neighbour. In the first week you will have rubbish in your bin that you don’t want to leave to decompose and rot for the time you are away. Neither do you want a passing criminal to notice and investigate why all the houses in the street have put their dustbin out – except you!

You should arrange for somebody to put the dustbin out and take it in when it has been emptied. In the first week all will then appear to be normal to the passing burglar. In the second and any subsequent weeks, ask the visitor to bring a few bags of rubbish, put them in your bin and put it out for collection as normal. This should maintain another little bit of the illusion that somebody is still at home and that the house is not empty and vulnerable.

Remember these things may be minor, but every single action helps to build on and reinforce the illusion that you are still at home!

Refuse collection – counter-measures

If at all possible make things appear as normal as they can be to passing criminals, including putting the bin out and taking it in as usual.
You should have arranged for somebody to visit your house every day to take junk mail off the step, look after the garden and generally make the house appear to be in use. They should also put the dustbin out the first week. In subsequent weeks they should put junk mail and rubbish into the bin and put it out for the dustman.
Ideally the person visiting the house must have time to spend an hour or so at the house, following the normal pattern of the homeowner. The dustbin should be put out and taken in following the same pattern as normal. If it is usually put out the night before, then do the same while the homeowner is away. If the bin is usually emptied and taken in about mid afternoon, then as far as is possible that should be kept up. You are trying to maintain a normal appearance! If a harassed relative races up in his car and screeches to a halt minutes before the dustman arrives and then races off back to work in a cloud of tyre smoke it will have totally the opposite effect to the one you are planning. That sort of behaviour will draw attention to your house. Just like milk piled up on a doorstep, or mail overflowing from a letterbox, a dustbin left out overnight is a clear sign that nobody is home. A burglar will soon notice that and take action to investigate further.

Don’t give information away

You have hopefully made your house and property as secure as you can and your car is locked away and secure in the garage. Now that you are going away, will you tell all of the local criminals that you won’t be at home for two weeks because you will be on the beach in Barbados or driving across America?

Well you say you won’t, but are you sure you won’t be telling them that? You are excited about your holiday and are happy to tell family and friends, neighbours and colleagues at work, all about your imminent adventure. Can you trust all of them? Even if you can trust all of them, who might they mention your holiday plans to? How many people know about your holiday plans? Take a moment to consider the question and mentally add any names to the list below.

You told the milkman because you had to cancel the milk and because he was impressed with your proposed trip to Barbados, he has told everyone at the depot – then they told their friends and family so you have to consider them as well.
You told the newsagent and his staff, then there are the 15 paperboys and their families. When you were telling the newsagent, there were three other people in the shop at the time and they all told their friends and family.
The travel agent and staff know, of course, plus anyone they told and anyone else who was in the shop at the time!
The bank employees where you got your foreign currency and travellers cheques all know.
The doctor and their staff know, because you had to enquire about vaccinations and first aid, then book and have your vaccinations.
Everyone where you work knows, plus at least a few customers and suppliers!
Everyone at the local pub and anyone they speak to now know.
Not forgetting everyone at the local taxi company and they even know the date, time and flight numbers of your departure and return!

So, without too much trouble we have identified a minimum of one hundred people who know that you will be out of the country for two weeks starting on the 14th. Are you happy with that?

If you do speak to your neighbour you don’t know who is listening. Take a moment to consider how easy it could be. Perhaps unfortunately and unknown to you, when you were talking to Mrs Biggins a prolific burglar was sitting in the seat behind you on the bus. He heard what you said about your holiday so he got off the bus and followed you home. Now he knows where you live and he knows that you will be away for two weeks starting on the 14th. He knows that you will be in Barbados and that you live in the really nice house he followed you to, so he thinks it will definitely be well worth him coming back in the early hours of the 16th. Is that good?

When the taxi comes to collect you and take you to the airport, you quite happily say to this strange man, take us to terminal four and then collect us again from the Barbados flight that lands at Heathrow at 19:35 on the 29th. Are you happy that you just told a stranger that your house is empty until then?

It is incredibly easy for information about your holiday absence to get into the wrong hands, but what can you do about it?

Information – countermeasures

Limit the number of people who know about your holiday. There will be plenty of boasting time when you come back with loads of holiday snaps and that tasteful straw donkey!
If possible get a relative to take you to the airport and collect you again on your return, then you won’t have to tell any taxi drivers.
If you have to take a taxi, don’t tell the taxi company or driver how long you will be gone and consider using a different company to collect you from the airport on your return (that way nobody knows how long you will be gone). You could consider asking a relative to book the return taxi a day or so before your return, so even if they have criminal contacts they have little warning about your empty property and little opportunity to do anything about it.
It may be considered rude but I tend not to talk to a taxi driver about anything other than the weather and traffic. He may be simply talkative, he may just be nosy, but he may be pumping me for details that I don’t really want him to have.
If you have to use the same company for the journey to the airport and home again consider doing some acting! Without going over the top in your acting debut, make them think somebody is still at home when you leave. For example, wait until the driver is moving and therefore can’t pay too much attention to the house and then wave at your house and say something to your partner like ‘Look there’s Colin, he said he wouldn’t wave us off.’ Or perhaps ‘Gosh, I didn’t think Frank was ever going to let us go.’ Hopefully you will have said and done enough to make the taxi driver think that there is somebody still living in the house. That means that even if he was thinking of coming back to liberate a few of your most valuable possessions late that night, he should think again.
Don’t put your home address on your outbound luggage tickets. They are an advert to anyone at the airport that you are going abroad and any burglars could treat the departure lounge as a pick and mix burglary counter. Once again the criminal can read you! Expensive luggage, booked on the scheduled flight to Barbados, home in the posh district of Commuterville – it won’t take him long to spot the worthwhile targets. Have two luggage tickets, the outward bound ticket showing the holiday hotel address, then the return ticket that you put on before coming to the airport to come home again, which can show your home address. (I doubt if burglars have gone international yet, so anyone in the terminal in Barbados or wherever you are going won’t be on the phone to his cousin Jimmy telling him to nip round to burgle your house.)

House sitter

Pets have to be considered when taking a holiday, and while some people are happy to bear the cost of putting their dog or cat in a boarding kennel, others arrange for a house sitter to take care of the house and their pets. This has the double benefit of keeping the house lived in and secure, as well as keeping the pets at home in familiar surroundings.

Boarding and kennel rates of £9 to £12 per day for a large dog and £6 per day for a cat are not uncommon and certainly not the most expensive I have seen quoted. Individually they don’t seem too high, but when some kennels charge extra for insurance, heated accommodation and special diets the price soon adds up. The cost of boarding a family dog or cat while you are away on a two-week holiday could quite easily reach £250.

When the cost can be as high or higher than that, inviting somebody to stay at your house begins to make sense, especially if you have a couple of dogs and a cat! You will, however, have to ensure that they are trustworthy and will maintain your security standards while you are away. It is pointless making your house secure if for two weeks of the year your nephew Trevor Biggins leaves doors and windows open, holds open house parties and can’t quite get the hang of not leaving the keys in your car!

House sitter – countermeasures

If you are wealthy and have a lot of valuable possessions, your house will be a lot more secure when you are away on holiday or business trips if somebody is living in your house.
It is possible to hire somebody as a house sitter, but you will have to be very sure of their credentials before you hand over the keys. I suggest that you only let a relative stay in the house and look after it. A relative is a known quantity so should be easier to select, easier to arrange and more trustworthy than a stranger.
If you have any pets, bringing in a house/pet sitter could make sound financial sense. Apart from saving hundreds of pounds in pet boarding fees, you get the extra security of somebody living in the house. (An additional benefit is that the pets are happier because they get to stay at home.)
If you do organise a house/pet sitter, you must be very certain that the sitter is honest and trustworthy, and that they are as careful with home security as you would be.

Create an illusion of activity

There are some things that can be done to add to the illusion of life and activity at your empty home. I have given a couple of examples. Knowing your own home, family and personal circumstances see if you can add a few illusions of your own.

Illusion of activity – countermeasures

Depending on your relationship with your neighbour, you could invite them to occasionally park a car in your drive or outside your house to increase the illusion that there is activity in, around and associated with your empty house.
If safe and appropriate, you could ask a neighbour to allow their children to play in your garden occasionally. You might wish to ask a visiting gardener, or the relative who is collecting your milk and checking for unwanted mail and circulars, to bring their children with them to boost the illusion of occupancy.
Remember that carefully rationed acting will help as well! When the man who looks after your garden is leaving, he could stand at the gate and pretend to be holding a short conversation with you! For example he could pretend to be answering a question and call something like ‘OK, I’ll check to see if I can get a couple of those roses, see you next week’ towards the back of the house. If the acting is low key and only tried once a week it should help. If the acting is bad and overdone it will draw attention to the empty house.

Careful departure

Think security in everything you do. Don’t make a grandstand play out of leaving for the airport! It is pointless taking all of these security steps to make people think you are still at home, if you make so much noise and fuss about leaving that half the county can’t help knowing that you have gone to the airport with three large suitcases.

If Uncle George is taking you to the airport get him to reverse up to the house and slip the cases into the boot with as few people seeing them as you can. If you are going in a taxi, try to arrange for a time when there won’t be a big audience watching you. If everyone drives past your house on the way to work between 8 and 9 in the morning, try to arrange for the taxi to collect you before 8 or after 9, that way fewer people will see you leave with your obvious holiday cases.

General holiday security advice

For your peace of mind more than anything else, define a routine for closing the house while you are away. You already know that you have to cancel the milk, cut the grass, arrange for deliveries to be made before you go, etc., but look beyond that.

You don’t want to get to the airport or be sitting in some Aztec ruin in the Andes worrying about household security. Think of the stress you would suffer if you couldn’t quite remember if you had turned off the kitchen tap when you had a glass of water before you left, or if anyone ever actually shut the back door when Uncle George arrived to take you to the airport.

Define a procedure, list or method that will take you from room to room, to secure the house, switch on the electric timers that will operate lights and the radio, close the bedroom windows, lock the side gate, etc.

If you do that, and then follow that procedure or list in good time before your transport arrives, your should be able to avoid those nagging worries and enjoy your holiday.

General holiday security advice – countermeasures

Pay particular attention to securing the house when you are leaving for more than a few hours, particularly when going on holiday.
If a relative or neighbour will be visiting the house and will actually have access to the building, make sure that they know how to secure the house properly. I once attended a burglary where the burglar had come in through a rear door that was not locked. The owners were on holiday, the neighbour was clearing post and checking the house but couldn’t get the back door to lock so she left it unlocked. The owners had forgotten to say that the lock on the back door was damaged, and you had to push the key in, half turn it then pull on the key and fully turn it to lock the door. Their failure to replace the lock before they went and their oversight in not explaining about the lock lost them some valuables and the insurance refused to pay out because the house wasn’t secure.

Long holidays and business trips

There are ways of covering up a holiday that lasts a couple of weeks, but longer holidays and long business trips present some unique problems and are harder to hide.

I was recently called to a house that had been burgled and heavily vandalised. It was a detached house set in a large garden, and the owners were on a six-month business trip to the USA. They had taken some of the holiday countermeasures to disguise their absence but that wasn’t enough. Unfortunately they hadn’t identified the new problems presented by a longer absence. When they had been gone a couple of months, louts noticed that the house was clearly unoccupied, they broke in, stole some property and then stayed for at least an hour to trash the place. Toilets and basins were broken, taps were left on, paint thrown around and doors ripped off their hinges. The television was smashed and china and glassware was broken and thrown all over the house. The final bill for damage and loss ran into thousands of pounds.

Standing on the road outside the house, the signs and evidence that it was empty were clear and easy to see. For example:

Tall weeds had grown up through the drive and around gates. Nobody was using the drive, car wheels and people’s feet weren’t knocking weeds down and killing them. Gates were not being opened, sweeping weeds aside. It was clear from casual observation that the drive and gates were not being used.
It was late spring going into early summer, and bushes in the front garden had grown quickly, partly blocking the front path, the lounge windows and the front doorstep.
Ivy that was growing up the side of the house had started growing across the living room window at the front of the house, a blatant sign that nobody was caring for the house.
A telephone directory had been delivered and left on the front doorstep, but spring rain had begun to turn it into paper mulch.
The front windows, front door and doorstep were all dirty and dusty. Even an untrained eye could clearly see that footprints in the dirt on the front step showed where a male (postman) had stood on the step then left. The footprints clearly showed that nobody had come out of the house.

Overall the impression was of an unloved and unused house. It didn’t take a master detective to read the clues, even the brain dead local louts couldn’t fail to notice – and unfortunately for the homeowner, they didn’t.

Long holidays and business trips – counter measures

If you are going to be gone for a long time, remember the lessons that can be learned from the case above. Spend some time identifying the new vulnerabilities to which you are exposed by being absent from your home for more than a couple of weeks. When you have identified them, define and introduce countermeasures to them. For example:

If you are going away for more than three weeks, I suggest that you MUST have somebody trustworthy looking after your house, performing the duties listed above and below.
Check your house insurance, as some policies are void if the house is empty for more than a specified number of weeks. You could find on return from an extended absence that your house has been destroyed but the insurance company refuses to pay out because the house had been left empty.
Plan ahead and think of the seasons. Take time to consider the things that will happen while you are away and take steps to overcome any problems. For example:
- In spring – remember that plants put on a spurt of growth. In winter nothing much will happen in your garden, but during a three-week absence in a good spring, your garden can become a jungle. Hedges, ivy, lawns, even weeds suddenly appear and demonstrate the lack of a controlling presence. Make sure that somebody is keeping an eye on the garden and trimming energetic plants back where needed.
- In summer – many plants put on a growth spurt, drought kills them, wasps and other pests build nests and take properties over. You should have arranged for somebody to be looking after the house and garden, and they should take whatever steps are necessary to keep everything in order. That may mean watering the lawn, or arranging for a wasps’ nest to be removed from the porch!
- In autumn – the most noticeable difference is leaves falling from the trees. In itself that is not a major disaster, unless your garden is usually immaculate, then rafts of decaying leaves can display your absence. Add a little wind and the leaves can blow together to collect in sheltered corners which gives two problems. A stray bonfire night rocket can set fire to leaves collected against your shed or garage and put it at risk from fire. The same leaves can blow up against the back door, or collect on the front step, another clear sign that there is nobody home. Another job for the person watching the house: if the leaves are usually raked up and put on the compost pile, that is what should be done. They should certainly be looking for anything that is a clear sign of the absence of residents, such as making sure leaves don’t collect on the front doorstep.
- In winter – frost and snow clearly show that there is no activity in a house. Activity leaves clearly visible tracks in heavy frost or snow, such as footprints, garage doors and gates being opened or closed, and car tyre track. If your house is the only one with none of these signs, your house is the one that will be noticed. If you are going on an extended holiday or business trip, you may have left your car in the garage. It may be beneficial for the person watching your house to start it up and take it for a run now and then to keep everything charged up and in good order as long as they are properly insured to use the vehicle. Occasionally using your car will be ideal because it will allow them to use the garage and leave wheel tracks in the snow and frost. Alternatively you could ask a neighbour to park their car in your drive so that there are signs of activity. After fresh snow, ask them to walk up and down the path a few times, break a path to the shed, make tracks out to the greenhouse, make it look as though there is some life at the house. Consider sweeping or shovelling snow off the drive and definitely clear any off the front doorstep!
Make sure that somebody opens and closes the gates, and shed and garage doors. The opening action sweeps leaves and snow off the path showing that the doors and gates are in use.
The person looking after the house should consider sweeping the path and drive; it will take some time but will show activity and occupation in a number of ways.
The person looking after the house should keep an eye on the condition of windows and the front door and doorstep. They need to be swept, dusted and occasionally washed, or they can quickly look like vacant premises. Remember that there is no crime in walking up to a front door to ring the bell. A passing criminal could see a house that doesn’t seem to be occupied and to check all they have to do is walk up and ring the front doorbell. If nobody answers, they make a note to come back when it is dark; if somebody answers they make excuses and leave.
In the summer and autumn, the person looking after your house should be asked to check any fruit or vegetables growing in the garden. Ripening and uncollected fruit is suspicious. Tell the person looking after your house to collect and take any fruit or vegetables growing in the garden.
At Christmas if you are away, you might ask the person looking after your house to put up a few decorations that are visible through the front window. Nothing elaborate is needed, just enough to show anyone who looks, that the phantom occupants are there and getting into the festive spirit by putting decorations up. Just as importantly, they must be taken down at the right time too!
Increasingly properties need protection on Halloween. The American child’s pastime of ‘trick or treating’ has been adopted by ever more louts. Their approach is more akin to blackmail and threats than childish fun. Any householder who does not answer their door and give food, money, drinks etc. to the louts is likely to suffer from blatant criminal acts. I have seen windows broken, cars vandalised, expensive shrubs broken off, paint thrown over a front door and fireworks pushed through letterboxes. If you plan to be away during Halloween it may be prudent to ask somebody to stay in the house and distribute a few pounds’ worth of chocolate and fizzy drink cans to avoid trouble.
You should also plan to avoid known local problems. Many areas suffer annual problems from a variety of large gatherings, be they pop festivals, large race meetings or other events that attract large numbers of people. If there is such an event in your area, and you can’t plan your absence to be at home to protect your property at that time, you should certainly arrange for somebody to stay in the property over that period to protect it!