With only a few days left until Christmas all but the most terminally disorganised of us will hopefully have our gifts for the year wrapped up and under the tree.

The sight of all those colourful packages of various shapes and sizes sitting pretty under the pine is truly wonderful – not just for us, but also for burglars.

As you can imagine, late December and early January are two of the most common times of the year to be burgled. Thieves, after all, are opportunistic and the chance to have away with a whole family’s worth of presents is one too good to miss. January is also known to be one of the toughest financial times of the year, which can also drive people to crime.

This year has seen a particularly bad spell of burglaries across the Ellesmere region of Shropshire, where there have been 10 reported cases over the past two weeks alone.

The north and midlands experience particularly high burglary rates, as can be seen on our burglary map of England & Wales. It’s such a worry that the South Yorkshire Police are currently running a burglary awareness campaign called #dontmakeiteasy.

As part of this campaign they have made a spoof of this year’s John Lewis advert in order to bring attention to common mistakes made over the holidays. One of these main mistakes is leaving presents (such as giant expensive trampolines) on clear view to thieves. You can watch the video below.

The force have also released ten other tips on how to lower your risk of being targeted:

• Always ensure your doors and windows are locked, even if you’re just in the next room
• Consider using a UV or permanent marker to mark your property – mark valuables with your postcode, house number or name and register them on immobilise.com
• Keep valuables and car keys out of view and away from doors and windows
• Consider using timer or sensor switches on your lights when you are out to make it look like someone’s at home
• If you have a burglar alarm make sure you use it when you go out and consider having effective window locks fitted
• If you don’t have a burglar alarm, consider installing one
• Consider fitting CCTV systems, or motion sensing flood lights
• Consider joining a neighbourhood watch scheme if you have one in your area or, if not, setting one up
• Don’t advertise on social media that your property is going to be empty over the festive period
• Dispose of boxes and rubbish discreetly – leaving boxes outside will signal to burglars that you have new and valuable items in the house

Suffering a break-in just before Christmas is such an upsetting idea that it doesn’t bear thinking about – but we can’t stress enough the importance of keeping vigilant. The sad truth is this period of goodwill to all is not observed by criminals.

The good news is that if you follow the advice in this post you’ll be at substantially less risk of being targeted.

From everyone here at Verisure we wish you a veri safe, secure and merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you in 2017!