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Effective garden Security lowers the cost of home Insurance
Improving the security of your garden can have several benefits. Apart from deterring thieves from targeting expensive items like garden furniture, securing access to your garden can also help reduce the cost of home insurance. Home insurance providers like Legal & General calculate their Legal & General home insurance premiums based on an assessment of the risk posed to your property from damage and theft, and this calculation includes many factors. Unsurprisingly, some of the more influential aspects to affect this calculation are the security measures that you employ to protect your home and garden. Here we look at some of the things you can do to make your home and garden more secure, deterring thieves and lowering the cost of your home insurance.
The garden is often the gateway guarding access to the rear of your property, and so providing a suitable barrier to potential thieves protects not just the garden but the home as a whole. A garden fence is of course a good place to start in delineating your space, but must of course be combined with a suitable garden gate to be properly effective as a deterrent. Fitting a lock on the garden gate is the next logical step, with an integrated mortise lock preferable to a simple padlock.
Try not to leave expensive equipment lying around, like garden tools or your new lawnmower, as these can potentially provide temptation to the opportunist thief. Once attracted into your garden, a would-be thief is then presented with the prospect of gaining entry to your home. If undisturbed, and not overlooked, the prospect of breaking and entering may start to seem feasible, and so ideally you’ll prevent anyone from getting into this situation in the first place.
If you live in a relatively high crime rate area, you might want to consider fitting CCTV equipment to monitor your garden while you are not at home. This visible deterrent measure can often produce a discount in your home insurance premium, and provide that missing pair of eyes if your garden is secluded and not visible to neighbours.
If your garden is visible to passing foot traffic, garden furniture can often be tempting to criminals. The high value of much garden furniture can make theft a profitable enough venture to consider, especially during the dark of night while you are absent from the house. Putting down a concrete platform on which to rest your garden furniture can also provide a handy point on which to secure your garden table with a bolt and chain.
A relatively cheap option which is definitely worth considering is the flood light with motion sensor, which can provide a vital night time deterrent to unwanted prowlers. Again, make sure that you inform your home insurance provider if you install such devices, as they can often lower the cost of your home insurance premium.
This article has been provided to us by third parties and is provided in good faith for information only.
