London is now the burglary capital of the UK, following figures released for 2013. It outstrips Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, with no fewer than 12 of its postal districts featuring in a list of the top 20 for household burglary claims.

The figures were issued in January of 2014 by Moneysupermarket.com which used its burglary claims tracker to analyse over three million insurance quotes. This allowed them to discover where homeowners were most likely to have made a claim for burglary or theft in previous years.

London take 12 of the top 20 Burglary Hotspots!

The worst district was the Chorlton-cum-Hardy suburb of Manchester, but London took second spot, courtesy of Herne Hill and Tulse Hill in SE24. Muswell Hill (N10) was third, while not too far behind in fifth place was Hampstead and East Finchley N2).

Dagenham (RM8) in East London kept London to the fore in fourth position. Postal districts in Liverpool claimed sixth and seventh positions, but London came back fighting, taking eighth with Edmonton and upper Edmonton (N18), ninth through Greenford and Perivale (UB6), and tenth place went to West Norwood and Gipsy Hill (SE27).

The Boldmere district of Birmingham B73, took eleventh position, but London’s E8 – Hackney Central, Dalston, and London Fields – claimed twelfth spot. The honours for thirteenth position went to Doncaster (DN2), but London came roaring back again, true to form, taking all the next four places.

Fourteenth was Whetstone, Totteridge and Oakleigh Park (N20), then came Homerton, Hackney Wick, South Hackney, Hackney Marshes, and Victoria Park (E9). After that it was back to North London again, with New Southgate, Friern Park, Bounds Green and Arnos Grove (N11) claiming sixteenth position, while the capital’s final entry was Stoke Newington, Shacklewell, and parts of Dalston, Stamford Hill, and Newington Green (N16) taking the honours for seventeenth place.

The insurance implications of burglary hotspots

If you live in any of these areas, your home insurance premiums will be an average of 24% higher than anywhere else in the country. Higher value properties would be very likely to pay even more than this.

Many insurance companies simply increase the premiums for these postal districts without taking the situation of an individual home owner into consideration.

Taking action to be less vulnerable

Of course, if you live in one of these postal districts, it goes without saying that you should take every precaution against burglary. The most obvious thing is to install a burglar alarm if your home does not already have one, along with security lighting, and CCTV. All of these will help to persuade your local, cheerful burglar that he may be better off targeting a softer option.

You can also take other precautions, such as leaving a TV on when you are out, leaving a light or two on, or perhaps using a timer that will switch lighting on and off if you are out or away from home. You can also get simple devices that react to daylight, so they will switch a light on as it gets dark, and switch it off again at daybreak.

Do you need a burglar alarm?

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