Lazy summer days risk home insurance violations

As the weather heats up, homeowners can tend to get more lax about securing their home, even leaving windows and doors open.

However, these little slip-ups could be letting burglars into your house and unfortunately it might not be covered under your home insurance.

Homeowners are being warned that unlocked doors and windows, and expensive equipment left out could cause your home insurance to be invalidated.

This is because opportunistic thieves will take advantage of the situation and most home insurers will not pay out if it is seen that the homeowner did not take precautions to protect themselves against the crime.

Statistics from the Home Office show that 31 per cent of burglaries are due to unlocked doors, while unsecured windows cause nine per cent of unlawful entries.

A few steps that homeowners can take to protect themselves against this include locking up garden valuables, securing doors and windows in unused rooms, and not leaving spare keys outside.

In light of the past week being National Home Security Week (August 25th to 31st), homeowners are being advised to take care with their safety precautions.

31/08/2007 15:31:24