After being burgled earlier in the year our insurance company have decided that they will not insure us unless we get a professionally installed and maintained alarm (Seems that no other company will touch us either according to comparison websites).
Starting searching around but asking if anybody has any recommendations or experience of this.

Whereabouts are you? Can recommend someone if you’re near me.

ton of this parish works somewhere that supplies alarms I think. He may be able to recommend a fitter if you’re oop north.

nope, down south Hampshire.
Thing is, I’d rather install it myself but they don’t seem to want to accept that.

youll also need a maintance contract and for it to be kept up to date, and possibly remote monitoring.

They won’t accept it because they are asking for it to be maintained too – and an alarm maintenance company wouldn’t touch a system installed by someone else.

We had the same demands following a break in a couple of years ago when our contents were insured with a popular company on here. We’d also had a small claim based on a loss two years earlier so were then deemed a high risk.

The cost of the renewal (which had gone up considerably), the alarm installation and the maintenance contract was going to be in the £2k ballpark so we decided to risk it and self-insure by putting the money we would have been paying aside. We also spent a bit on beefing up security.

We thought we were in a pretty safe area so chances of a repeat were relatively slim, we also didn’t think we wanted to get in the habit of using an alarm and would therefore invalidate the insurance if we had it anyway. I’ve never had an alarm in any house I’ve lived in and don’t like the idea of alarming the ground floor when asleep upstairs, plus we have a cat which made the process more complicated (=expensive).

This was a big risk and as it happens we did have an attempted break in on our shed last year. Fortunately nothing was taken but it has obviously made me very nervous.

Once the earlier claim is historic enough not to be declared we’ll see if we can insure without the requirement of an alarm. Until then we’re taking our chances and hoping the neighbourhood is as safe as we think! As I understand it, the number of burglaries has increased during the recession and neither us, nor any of our neighbours, had been hit in several years prior to ours.

Dr Bakes
I was thinking along these lines, but have you still got “buildings” insurance and just forgone “contents”. The payout was quite large but I will effectively be using it to buy and maintain something I do not want. The scrotes that done it were caught and they did not come from the area, I certainly feel safe where I am, although I might install one as a deterent. We were paying alot anyway, almost £800, but that did cover the bikes and travel.

Yes, we still have buildings insurance, and that went up a bit on account of having to declare the burglary claim for that.

It is risky but w’re already £4k up on what we would have paid for in premiums which would go towards replacing anything stolen in the future.

The burglary made us seriously rethink our security and streamline our possessions, however we were done at midday, on a week day when the house was secure, so I think we were just ‘unlucky’. Our neighbours were both in, the scrote was even seen carry my bag with my stuff in down the side of the house but assumed to be someone we knew! since then we, and our neighbours, are much more aware and our house is even harder to break into…..fingers crossed!

youll also need a maintance contract and for it to be kept up to date

Think our yearly maintenance costs £90.

There was no requirement from insurers for our house to be alarmed etc. but out of interest I checked how much different the yearly insurance would be for alarmed vs non-alarmed. It came to a princely £12 discount and meant basically every night we had to put the downstairs alarm on (thus probably waking sleeping child) or we wouldn’t be insured. I just paid the extra tenner for the saving of the hassle.

A lot of the things that were taken will not be replaced as they were family hand-me-downs/heirlooms.So might put the money away and keep fingers crossed. I’m not one for gadetry so what’s left is pretty basic. F’ing annoying.
ADT £200 + £23/mth 😯

You were paying £2k pa on house insurance! Where do you live, a 10 bedroomed palace in Beriut?

In Bucks we paid less than £200 pa for buildings/contents for a detached 3 bed inc. bikes on the wonderful old M&S deal.

When down south we had a maintained alarm with a Northampton company, just paid £80pa for an annual service. We didn’t have any remote connections – but I’m sure there will be cheaper than Lord A’s offshore crowd.

No:

The cost of the renewal (which had gone up considerably), the alarm installation and the maintenance contract was going to be in the £2k ballpark

3 bed semi in Oxford.