Storage facility security: the standard we ask partners to meet

Every family that hands us their furniture asks some version of the same question: who's watching it when I'm gone? This guide sets out the storage facility security standard we ask every partner to meet, item by item, and why each one matters to the person whose whole house is behind your shutter. If you own a warehouse or godown and you're thinking of renting it to us, this is what we'll check.

None of it is exotic. Most of it you can see from the gate. But each item is there because of something that goes wrong in buildings without it, and it helps to know the reason before you start fixing things.

Why storage facility security is stricter than it looks

A trading business that rents a godown usually stores stock it can replace. If a carton of soap goes missing, it's a line on a ledger. Our customers are different. A typical unit holds a family's bed, their parents' wardrobe, the wedding crockery, boxes of school certificates and photographs. Many of those families are abroad for a year or two and can't come and look. They're trusting a building they may never see.

So the standard isn't about deterring a professional gang. It's about the ordinary failures: a camera that stopped recording three weeks ago and nobody noticed, a gate left open while the chowkidar went for tea, a leak over one corner, a worker who let in a cousin with a key. A well run building closes off those gaps with habits more than hardware.

The standard at a glance

Some items are hard requirements and some are nice to have. A missing nice to have is never a reason to say no on its own, though it does shape which customers we'd place with you.

CCTV that actually records

We ask for cameras recording round the clock, covering the entrances and the storage floor. The word that matters there is recording. A surprising number of buildings have cameras on the wall feeding a monitor in the guard room and nothing more, or a DVR with a hard drive that filled up and stopped saving months ago.

Where the cameras point

At least one on every way in: the main gate, any shutter, any side door. Then enough inside to see the length of the storage floor. You don't need a camera on every unit. You need to be able to answer the question "who walked past this shutter between Tuesday night and Thursday morning".

How many days of footage

We'll ask how many days your recorder keeps before it overwrites. A family abroad might not notice a problem until they ask for a cupboard weeks later, so longer is better, and a recorder that keeps only a couple of days isn't much use to them. Usually the fix is a bigger hard drive in the same DVR, or recording at a lower resolution on the cameras that watch empty corridors.

The recorder itself

Put the DVR somewhere locked, not on a shelf by the gate where anyone leaving can pull the drive. Check once a week that it's still saving by playing back the previous night. That habit catches more failures than any equipment upgrade.

A guard, a gate and access on notice

We need a guard on site overnight. In most buildings that's the chowkidar who already sleeps by the gate, and that's fine. What matters is that he's there every night, including Eid and the nights after a wedding in the family, and that someone covers for him when he isn't.

A controlled gate is on the nice to have list, but it makes the guard's job far easier. One way in, kept shut, with a register of who comes through it. A building with three open sides and a guard in the middle is guarded in name only.

Access is on 48 hours' notice, weekends included. That's what we promise our own customers, so a partner can't offer less. The notice works both ways: you're never surprised by a visitor, and the visitor never turns up to a locked gate and a guard who wasn't told. Anyone who arrives without notice, or whose name we haven't sent you, doesn't go in. Call us first.

Fire, damp and pests

Fire safety

Smoke detection and extinguishers aren't hard requirements, but we'd like to see them, and they're among the cheapest items on this page. Put extinguishers by every door to the storage area, get them serviced and tagged, and make sure the guard knows how to use one. Keep packing waste and cardboard swept out rather than piled in a corner. We'll also ask whether the building carries an insurance policy, though that's a question about your building, not a promise we make to anyone.

Dry through the monsoon

Most of what we store is wooden furniture and upholstery, and water is what ruins it. The roof has to hold through the monsoon, which means checking it before the rains, not after. Look for daylight through roof sheets, rust round the fixing bolts, blocked gutters and downpipes that empty against the wall. Inside, look for tide marks on the floor and damp patches low on the walls. Keep goods off the floor on pallets and leave a gap from the walls so air can move. Ventilation matters as much as the roof: a sealed, still room holds damp all summer.

Fumigation and pests

Termites will eat into a wardrobe's back panel in a season. Rats nest in sofa cushions. Cockroaches get into boxes of linen. We ask for a fumigation schedule, done regularly by someone who does it for a living, with a dated record we can see. Seal gaps under shutters with brush strips, keep food out of the building entirely, including the guard's, and put bait stations along the walls.

The intake and release record

This one costs almost nothing and protects you more than anything else on the list. Every load that comes in gets written down: the date, whose goods they are, who brought them, how many items and their condition. Every item that leaves gets written down too: what it was, who collected it, and on whose authority.

That last part is where buildings get into trouble. A relative turns up saying the owner sent him. Maybe she did. Maybe they've fallen out. The rule is simple: nothing is released unless we've told you, in writing, who may collect and what. If the person at the gate isn't on our message, the answer is no, politely, until we've confirmed.

A bound register and a phone photo of each page works. So does a shared sheet. What doesn't work is memory.

Getting up to standard cheaply

Most buildings that fall short do so on a few small things, not on the structure. Before you spend on anything large, try these:

1. Test the recorder. Play back last night. If it's blank, fix that first.
2. Add a hard drive rather than new cameras, if the problem is days of footage.
3. Close off extra ways in. Lock or weld shut a side door nobody uses, so the gate is the only route.
4. Reseal the roof before the monsoon. New washers on the fixing bolts and a cleared gutter go a long way.
5. Book fumigation and keep the receipt.
6. Buy two extinguishers and a register.
7. Put down pallets so nothing sits on bare concrete.

If you'd like a sense of how this fits with the rest of the process, the guide to how a storage partnership works covers the call, the visit and the terms. Factory owners will find more on separating storage from production in the guide to renting out unused factory space.

Apply with the building you have

You don't need to have everything finished before you get in touch. Tell us what's there and what isn't, and we'll tell you honestly what would need to change. The first step on the storage partners page is four fields and takes under a minute. The photographs and the details of your CCTV, guard and roof come in the second step.

Nothing is signed until someone from our side has stood in the building and seen it for themselves. Start your application here.