Home defence

The parent page's layered model is sound and its last line is the important one: de-escalation, distance and a locked door beat any fight you did not have. This adds the procedure, because layers are a design and an intrusion is an event.

Press 55

This is the single most useful fact on this page and most British households have never heard it.

If you ring 999 and cannot speak, because somebody is in the house, because you are hiding, or because speaking would put you in danger, listen to the prompts and press 55 when asked. That tells the operator it is a genuine emergency and connects you to the police.

And say it out loud when you safely can. The parent page is right that loud awareness ends most of these events: "I have called the police, they are on their way, leave now." Most intruders want property and no contact, and being detected is what makes them go.

If you wake and somebody is downstairs

This is the scenario the whole page is really about, and the parent gives the components without the order. Decide this now, as a household, because it is not a moment for improvising.

1. Stay upstairs. Gather, do not investigate. Everyone to the agreed room, which is usually the main bedroom because it has a door, a phone and the adults in it.
2. Close and secure that door. This is what the safe room concept means, and it is doing the same job as the closed bedroom door in a fire.
3. Ring 999. Speak if you can, press 55 if you cannot.
4. Make it obvious the house is occupied. Lights on, voices, noise. Property theft ends when the thief learns someone is awake.
5. Do not go down to confront anybody, and do not chase. There is nothing downstairs worth what could happen on the stairs, and the legal and physical position is worst in a confrontation you initiated.
6. Let them leave. An intruder with a clear exit uses it.

Agree the code word the parent page mentions, and agree what it means: everyone to the room, now, no questions. It works for a fire, an intruder, or a situation outside the house, and a child who has practised it once will do it.

Rehearse the gathering, not the confrontation. Twenty seconds, once, so that everyone knows the room and the route to it in the dark.

The keys by the door

For most British households, the car on the drive is worth more than anything inside the house, and the key hanging in the hall is how it goes.

Keyless entry systems can be attacked by relaying the key's signal from inside the house to the car outside. Two people, a few minutes, no noise and no damage.

• Keep the key in a signal-blocking pouch, or in a metal tin, and away from the front of the house.
• Never hang keys in sight of the letterbox or a glazed door. Fishing keys through a letterbox is an older and simpler attack and it still works.
• The same applies to house keys. Not on a hook by the door, not in the lock, and not under anything outside.

And the parent page's list of what not to leave outside is worth repeating, because it is the actual pattern of British burglary: a ladder, a wheelie bin under a window, garden tools, an unlocked side gate. Most break-ins use something the household provided.

Security that does not trap you in a fire

The two threats on this page pull in opposite directions, and the fire one is far more likely.

The rule that resolves all of it: every measure must be reversible from the inside, in the dark, by the least capable person in the house. If it is not, it is a hazard rather than a security measure, and the risk it adds is larger than the risk it removes.

Test it that way. Window key found and used, in the dark, by a child, in under a minute.

What the layers are actually buying

The parent page's four layers are correct, and it helps to know what each one is really for, because it changes how much to spend on each.

• Layer 0, invisibility, is free and does the most. Nothing about your house should announce that it is worth attention. The parent page's phrase, "we are struggling too", is the whole of it, and it works because it is usually true.
• Layer 1, deterrence, is cheap and buys avoidance. Its purpose is to make somebody choose a different house, and any of it works: lights, gravel, a locked gate, a visible camera.
• Layer 2, delay, is where the money goes, and it is not much money. Long screws in the strike plate and hinges are a few pounds and change the outcome of the most common attack. Do this one first, whatever else you skip.
• Layer 3, detect and respond, buys the seconds that matter. A wedge alarm, a code word, a room with a door, and a phone. Cheap, and it is the layer that turns an event into an incident somebody else deals with.

None of it is about winning an encounter, and the parent page says so. It is about the encounter not happening, and about having somewhere to go and a way to call while it is not happening.