How to protect your home at Christmas

Along with the presents, food and parties, making sure your possessions are protected is vital for ensuring your Christmas runs smoothly.

At Christmas time the value of the contents in your house is pushed up by the amount of presents you have, whether unwrapped or stored under the tree.

In the festive period we’re often laden with gifts, both those to hand out to friends and family members and those we’ve been given. But because of the extra gifts lying around the house, which are normally all stacked in the same place, there is also an increased risk of theft.

Add to this the fact many people will be leaving their homes and travelling over Christmas and you have the perfect situation for criminals.

The weather is another factor and with snow and heavy rainfall forecast, it’s even more important to make sure you have the correct insurance in place to protect both your home and the extra contents in it during Christmas.

Several insurers will provide a boost to your cover at Christmas to compensate for the increased value of presents and this will be included in the small print.

Extra cover

There is no standard policy for Christmas cover, though a lot of insurers will provide an extra allowance for religious events and festivals.

This typically includes Christmas, Easter, Diwali, Eid and Hanukkah and can also stretch to cover events such as weddings.

Most policies won’t require you to inform the insurer first, but as the wording will be different with each, it’s worth checking the small print.

LV= and the Post Office, for example, include a 10% increase in the value of your home insurance cover for one month before and one month after any religious festival or special occasion while Direct Line adds on 20% for its customers on the Direct Line Home Plus policy.

Other insurers will add on a specific amount, such as Aviva which automatically increases the cover by £3,000 and Tesco which adds on £7,500.

If your insurer doesn't offer this, contact it to ask if the sum can be temporarily increased. If the cost is too high you might want to compare the price of switching to a provider which will automatically include extra cover at Christmas.

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How to protect your home at Christmas

Unfortunately Christmas isn’t just a time of cheer; it’s also a period where burglaries are more common.

If you’re going to be away from home, make sure a trusted neighbour or friend is around to take in your mail or any packages and open and close your curtains to ward off criminals. Leaving the radio on when you’re out of the house, keeping a light on or using a timer-controlled light and moving valuables out of sight are also tactics employed to deter thieves.

After you’ve wrapped up Christmas presents, make sure you discard of the packaging somewhere out of sight. Social media is one way thieves can find out about when you'll be out of the house, so avoid talking about specific dates or places on Facebook and Twitter.

As the weather is more extreme during Christmas, keeping the heating on while you’re away, just for an hour a day will help prevent water pipes freezing.

You should also make sure that your pipes are insulated and consider fitting new washers if your taps tend to drip.

Covering your home in the New Year

Home insurance policies should be kept up-to-date, but this is often a task which is forgotten about or moved to the bottom of our ‘to do’ lists.

The New Year is the perfect time to check over your policy, especially as you may have to increase it to cover any expensive Christmas gifts you now have in your home.

High value items, such as engagement rings, need to be listed separately on a home insurance policy. These are generally covered under the ‘personal possessions’ part which covers individual items up to an average value of £2,000 on most policies.

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