With Christmas around the corner, you may be winding down for a festive break. However, this often means leaving your business premises vacant over a period of time, which can raise safety issues. Here’s a checklist to keep your premises safe.
Christmas Risk
When your business closes over Christmas, your site will likely be left unstaffed, making it vulnerable to threat, and lack of activity makes it ideal for intruders. However, sufficient protection can ensure that your business is not a target for theft, vandalism or fire.
Safety Checks for Christmas
Test CCTV
Before shutting down for the holidays, ensure that your CCTV and intruder alarms are working, and ensure that your system is set when the last person leaves your premises. Recent studies show that 30% of business premises have been affected by burglaries since 20231, so ensuring you have a suitable security system in place is essential. You can also display CCTV stickers that act as a deterrent to thieves.
Fire Alarm Maintenance
To comply with fire safety regulations, your fire system should be serviced every 6 months. However, if your service is due over the period when your premises are closed over Christmas, this may mean that there is a period where your system is not compliant. Therefore, it is recommended that you check your service history and due date, and book in for a service prior to the Christmas break. This will ensure that your business is compliant, and will prevent your premises from exposure to vulnerabilities, and helps with the continuous protection of your site.
Alarm Monitoring
For both CCTV and fire alarm systems, having remote monitoring allows you to ensure incidents can be dealt with immediately, to keep your property secure. If possible, now is a great time to change to a remote system. You should also allocate a designated responder to check for on-site disturbances.
Building Access and Barriers
Ensure barriers to your car parks are shut to restrict to authorised personnel only, and ensure all windows and doors are closed and locked. You can also fit window and door sensors as part of your security system to ensure that any disturbances come through via your security system.
Unplug devices
In 2020, there were over 19,000 electrical fires in the UK, and the festive season sees this number increase.
As best practice, you should ensure that any plugs, cables, sockets or electrical items are not covered (including heaters), and that plugs not in use are turned off. Christmas usually brings with it lights and decorations, which can lead to extension leads becoming overloaded, leading to electrical fires. To prevent this, stick to the recommended voltage for sockets and extensions, and examine any electrical wires on christmas lights for any fraying, ensure connections are intact.
Check Decorations
Ensure that any decorations that you have put up over the festive period are not blocking fire exits, and that decorations are not near sources of ignition. One thing often overlooked is your Christmas tree – you should ensure that it has plenty of water to minimise how flammable it is.
Remote Fire Monitoring
We offer a variety of solutions for fire panel remote monitoring, allowing you to manage your fire alarm system to ensure any threats are detected as early as possible, to allow you to action prevention.
Zeta Remote
The SmartConnect range of panels from Zeta Alarms offer remote monitoring via the Zeta Remote web portal and apps. This allows you to check your system via the Cloud from anywhere.
AdvancedLive
Giving you a digital visualisation of your Advanced fire alarm system, AdvancedLive allows you to access all of the data you need to monitor your fire system’s health and status remotely.
The AdvancedLive dashboard is accessible from anywhere on your internet-enabled device, allowing you to access your fire system remotely in real-time, with notifications to alert you should your fire system alarm.
Outlook
Whether you own a small or big premises, it is important to complete these actions to ensure that your premises continue to be safe during a quiet period.
1 Safe
