The final countdown to Christmas has officially begun... with gifts stacked under the tree and Christmas shopping loaded in car boots, the festive period can be a prevalent time for thieves to strike.

When it comes to security, you could be forgiven for focusing solely on your home at Christmas time. But it's important not to neglect your car during the festive period. Extra vigilance is required to keep your vehicle secure at Christmas...
 

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UK construction sites are increasingly being targeted by thieves who recognise the financial value of plant machinery.

Smaller items of plant equipment such as mini excavators and generators are often stolen from contract sites outside of working hours or whilst being hired out. Consequently, many plant hire firms are now investing in additional security measures such as on-site cameras, perimeter fences and tracking devices to keep their vehicles safe from theft.

We are excited to announce that Radius Payment Solutions, the group behind the telematics and fuel card brands Kinesis and UK Fuels, has acquired Sure-Track. 

We received a call early in the morning about the theft of an Ifor Williams trailer from a Manchester based construction firm.

We remotely traced the trailer to the Port of Liverpool. It's location meant we had to act fast so our recovery team headed straight to the scene. Using RF scanning equipment to pick up a signal, they began a thorough investigation of the area.

The theft of high value machinery can be seriously damaging for small forestry companies. These types of crimes often involve significant damage to the property where the machine is stored, as well as additional losses such as chainsaws, climbing kits and other vital equipment. To compound this issue, the remote rural locations where forestry equipment is stored, results in elongated police response times.

With the demand for construction equipment on the rise, crime levels are increasing also. Building and construction sites are perfect targets for thieves, with expensive tools and machinery left lying around after work hours, it's an open invitation for would-be thieves. 

The impact of theft on construction and plant hire firms can be catastrophic. Not only is there a high cost in terms of both time and money spent replacing this expensive equipment, but without the right tools, firms are simply unable to work. 

It’s been well documented that vehicle theft is on the rise. The Association of British Insurers paid out £108million in Q1 of 2019, £1.2million every day… and the home office has recorded a 50% increase in vehicle thefts over the last five years. 

Despite all this doom and gloom, Sure-Track has operated at a 90% recovery rate over the last 14 years. 

A worrying half of the new cars launched this year have been given a poor security rating after Thatcham Research found their keyless entry systems could easily be bypassed by thieves.

The Association of British Insurers also said its members paid out a record £376m for car thefts in 2018 with a car being stolen every six minutes in the UK.

Thatcham Research has been at the forefront of vehicle security since the 1990s when it introduced the New Vehicle Security Assessment (NVSA) to address levels of vehicle crime and launched the Thatcham Categories for Alarm and Immobiliser systems that is now established as an industry benchmark. 

As of 1 January 2019, all Thatcham Research security product assessments have been conducted under a new ‘Thatcham Security Certifications’ brand, an overarching service. The certification provides reassurance around the functionality, design and performance of alarms, immobilisers and tracking systems.  

Sure-Track is delighted to announce that Selwood, one of the UK's largest Plant Hire companies, has chosen us as their new provider for telematics across their fleet of plant machinery.

Selwood has opted for the brand new Security Keypad Immobiliser system with additional inputs and outputs reporting live into our online portal.

With an increasing number of vehicles on the roads, companies need to do everything they can to protect the safety and integrity of their fleet. Fitting the latest Telematics and Incident Camera equipment can be considered a major step towards achieving this goal.

With the festive season fast approaching… we can almost hear the clinking of glasses at the endless Christmas parties to be taking place up and down the country.

That’s why, the owners of a beautiful Piaggio Ape Prosecco Bar were left in a fizz, when they discovered their bar had been stolen from a ‘secure’ storage compound.

Back in May we received a call from a long-standing customer, who reported that one of their vans had been stolen from a construction site in West London. We immediately got to work on the recovery, and put the tracker into alarm mode.

Established in 1974, Chasetown Civil Engineering is a market leader specialising in infrastructure, groundworks and related building services with project values ranging from £100,000 to £50million.