4 Tips to ensure your vehicle is secure at home and work

Over the course of the 2018-19 year there have been over 150,000 vehicles stolen in Great Britain, a 10,000 increase on the year before and a 56% increase from 2014-15. This highlights the ever-growing need for vehicle and car park safety solutions both from a domestic and business point of view.

The problem is that many people are unaware of how they can keep their vehicles safe both in their residential area and at work. Fortunately there are a number of options available to ensure the safety of your vehicles and here are some of the best actions you can take to ensure your security is sufficient.

Perform a risk assessment

A risk assessment can sound like a daunting task but is simply the act of reviewing your current security measures and asking yourself how you can improve. Contrary to popular belief, this task can be performed by domestic vehicle owners and businesses.

If you are a business looking to enhance the security of your car park it is essential to undertake an annual risk assessment to ensure that the vehicles you are responsible for remain safe and secure.

A risk assessment can simply involve checking around your car and the area it’s parked in and assessing if the location is secure and how easy it might be to get into your vehicle.

If you have a dodgy lock or window and tend to keep your car in a vulnerable location over night, you might be a more risk and therefore need to find a solution to ensure you’re vehicle doesn’t get damaged or worse, stolen.

CCTV

As a business, CCTV should be a priority when protecting your car parking areas. It is proven that CCTV can act as a strong deterrent to potential criminals and can be relatively cost effective, depending on the quality of camera you require.

There are also domestic CCTV kits available from a number of companies that are relatively affordable and some companies offer a full installation service as standard which can greatly reduce the chances of things going wrong if installing them yourself.

The additional benefit of CCTV is that if the worst should happen, everything will have been monitored and captured which can be beneficial if filing a police report.

Security Lighting

Security lighting can work side by side with CCTV, especially if you know there are blind spots that need to be covered. Effective lighting can be utilised by both businesses and domestic vehicle owners as an effective method of scaring away criminals who may wish to steal vehicles under your protection or ownership.

An additional benefit of security lighting is that, depending on the size of your premises, it is relatively simple to install and extremely cost effective whilst acting as an effective security method.

Access control Security

Traditional access controls security measures such as traffic control barriers, keypad systems and retractable security bollards are mainly utilised at business premises and can not only help protect vehicles in your car park but also help manage the flow of traffic in and out of your premises.

However, there are more affordable options for domestic customers including arrange of smart parking barriers. These smaller, lightweight, retractable barriers are designed for business and domestic use and are smartphone controlled allowing for additional security.

Ultimately, it is beneficial to utilise a range of security systems to protect your vehicles and car parks, especially if you are larger business and the systems which you require will depend on your own personal needs.