Editorial

Domestic bliss?

If you had a pound for every time you’d heard “challenging times” or “unprecedented times” and the like this year, you’d be quite well off by now. But we always live in “challenging times” of a sort don’t we?

No matter what is going on in the world there is always crime. It’s a sad state of affairs but people really do change their criminal behaviour to suit and exploit disasters, diseases and depressions. Of course, over the years the manner of the crimes has evolved - it’s not really the done thing to take the old school way of toting a shooter down the bank anymore that strikes a note with robbers because computers have given crims all over the globe access to bank accounts and financial details from the comfort of their bedrooms. The chance of getting away with it is not all that bad if you are based in Russia and hacking a UK account. And that is one of the main key factors in a crime happening at all.

Criminals look for opportunity and for a clean getaway which is why two homes next to each other, one with an alarm or CCTV and one without, will most of the time result in the unprotected property being the one that is targeted. Which makes the results of a recent survey all the more interesting (see News this month). Less than half of UK homes apparently have an alarm fitted and only around a third boasts any CCTV. Quite why homeowners don’t look to protect their most valuable possession is a head scratcher and you may well have stopped doing domestic work because you end up quoting for too many jobs without getting any viable levels of come back on installations of around £600 to protect a house and property worth £200,000 plus.

Any post-lockdown crime stats may end up showing a drop in the numbers of burglaries because people were all at home for the period (so too much chance of getting caught) with activities like vehicle thefts being the crime du jour during Spring 2020. However, once people start returning to work and houses again become empty during most of the daytime we might well see a rise in the home intruder figures. But it’s not all bad news.

According to the survey there is a demographic of people who are most likely to have domestic protection and fortunately for installers it is the over 60s that are less likely to have a burglar alarm or CCTV camera installed at their property, compared to younger age groups. Hopefully therefore, going forward the public perception of requiring security will be more favourable and the number of UK homes that represent attractive targets to criminals will be on the decline. For the moment though the UK domestic market remains a market with potential.