AVOCET SAYS AVIVA ACKNOWLEDGEMENT MARKS INSURANCE INDUSTRY TURNING POINT

Avocet Hardware has welcomed Aviva’s decision to advise its customers about the use of TS007 3-star or SS312 Sold Secure Diamond accredited locks when seeking to protect their homes against lock-snapping.

The West Yorkshire company, which sells the only Euro profile locks in the UK with both a 3-star British Kitemark and Sold Secure Diamond accreditation, says that Aviva’s move opens the door for an insurance industry wide shift in attitude towards lock-snapping prevention.

Avocet’s managing director, Clive Lloyd said: “Until very recently the UK insurance industry was, at best, exceedingly remiss when it came to lock-snapping. Policy holders who had been burgled as a result of it were simply being given like-for-like replacements of the snapped locks, meaning their homes were being put straight back at risk of another attack by using the same type of cylinder that had just failed.”

“The first indication of change occurred earlier this year when the RISCAuthority incorporated an explanation of lock-snapping and the importance of TS007 and SS312 in the fight against it in its publication, Guidance to Occupiers.”

At the time, the Avocet team was cautiously optimistic that the RISCAuthority’s decision would lead to change, but even they didn’t think that less than six months later they’d be looking at one of the biggest players in the market taking such a significant step.

“This is absolutely huge,” added Clive. “Aviva has put the rest of the insurance industry in a situation where they have to follow suit or risk alienating their policy holders as a result of failing to alert them to the nature of the problem and the way to remedy it.”

In one of the biggest examples of the effectiveness of its snap secure locks to date, Leeds City Council began an initiative in 2010 that saw 10,000 ABS Snap Secure locks installed during a 12-month period in East Leeds. This, alongside other police initiatives, resulted in a 36 per cent drop in burglary rate in the year to October 2012 – a figure that equated to 3,200 fewer victims than the previous year.