What to do before you go home for Christmas
Published on 12 December 12
You may be looking forward to going home for Christmas, but to avoid any nasty surprises on your return, make sure you follow our checklist to keep your property safe
Going home checklist
- If you’re in private rented accommodation try to make sure you take all portable expensive electronic equipment with you. Taking the 42” wide screen TV may not be an option, so make sure you put it somewhere out of sight. If the thief can’t easily see property worth stealing via a casual glance through a window it may put them off breaking into your property.
- Try to make your accommodation look occupied, rather than a house in darkness for weeks. Invest in a cheap plug in timer(s) that you could use with a lamp. This can be set to come on at different times during hours of darkness and may prove to be a deterrent to the thief (currently £2.60 with a well known online retailer).
- Agree with your housemates that the last person to leave your accommodation does a visual and physical check to make sure all windows and doors have been locked.
- If you’re transporting equipment from your accommodation to a car etc, make sure you lock your door between journeys unless you can see the entrance to your house/flat.
- When travelling back home try to carry laptops etc in a bag/case that doesn’t ‘shout’ computer in here.
- Coming back – remember if Santa does bring you lots of new expensive electronic gifts please leave all packaging at home. This is so that you don’t have to bin it when you get back to Manchester and advertise that you’ve got lots of expensive ‘goodies’.
General advice about keeping you and your property safe
The impression that all crimes occur during the hours of darkness is not always correct, there have been a number of crimes on campus during the day, usually involving mobile phones.
Many of the new generation smart phones/devices will have a tracking app available to download. Take advantage of this technology if it’s applicable. The Police have had a number of successes using the tracking facility. Although you need to make sure you password protect the tracking app so that the thief can’t easily disable it.
How to report crime
Please report any suspicious behaviour/people on campus to security on 0161 306 9966. Don’t worry about wasting security officers time they would sooner come out to a false alarm than not get a call in the first place.
If you are a victim of crime please report it to security on 0161 306 9966 or the Police on 101. If it’s an emergency and the crime has just happened, it’s 999.
For more information regarding safety around campus, visit the Crime Reduction at the University of Manchester Facebook page.