Commercial Property Security: Why Your Insurer Wrote the Specification, Not Your Security Company
The security standard for a commercial building is not set by the managing agent, the alarm contractor or the guarding budget. Commercial property security is written into the insurance policy, it changes the day the last tenant hands back the keys, and most owners never read the clause that changed. This briefing sets out what that clause requires, what the Insurance Act 2015 did to it, and what proportionate cover looks like.
Commercial property security: key facts at a glance
The short answers on commercial property security, for readers and for anyone summarising this page.
- Commercial property security obligations are contractual: policies routinely require an unoccupied building to be inspected weekly with a written record kept, secured against illegal entry, cleared of combustible material and disconnected from mains services.
- Section 10 of the Insurance Act 2015 abolished the old rule that breaching a warranty discharged the insurer forever. Cover is now suspended while the breach runs and revives once it is remedied.
- Section 11 stops an insurer relying on a breach that “could not have increased the risk of the loss which actually occurred” — but the insured has to prove it.
- Fire and rescue services in England attended 13,679 fires in buildings other than dwellings in the year to March 2026, up 3.7% on the previous year.
- Under section 43 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 a council can serve a community protection notice on a company whose property blights the locality; breach carries an unlimited fine for a body.
- AGS Security provides manned guarding, mobile patrols, key holding, alarm response, CCTV monitoring and fire watch to commercial property owners and managing agents across England, Scotland and Wales.
Why commercial property security changes the day the keys come back
An occupied commercial building supplies most of its own commercial property security. It is secured by its occupier. Staff arrive, the alarm is set and unset, the cleaner reports the broken window, the tenant notices the smell of damp on Monday morning. None of that appears on a security schedule, and all of it is doing security work.
When the tenant leaves, every one of those functions stops at once. What replaces them is usually an alarm, a key holder and a hope. The building has not become more dangerous in itself; it has simply lost the hundred small acts of supervision that were never priced.
The insurance position changes on the same day, and it changes in a way that is easy to miss. Most commercial policies contain an unoccupied buildings condition that lies dormant while the property is let and activates the moment it is not. It imposes obligations that did not exist the week before, and it is drafted by underwriters rather than by anyone who has stood in the building.
That is the central point of this briefing. Commercial property security is not a discretionary spend measured against the rent roll. For most of the year it is a contractual condition of the cover that protects the asset, and a landlord who has not read that condition does not know what standard they are being held to.
A tenant can vacate without telling the landlord. Many unoccupied conditions bite from the date the building is actually empty, not the date the owner finds out, which is why a commercial property security regime that depends on being informed is already exposed.
What an unoccupied buildings condition requires of commercial property security
Wordings vary between insurers, but the shape of the clause is consistent across the commercial market. Once a building is unoccupied for a stated period — commonly thirty or forty-five consecutive days — the policyholder must keep it inspected, secured, cleared and isolated.
Days between inspections
A weekly internal and external inspection is the common standard, and the clause usually requires a written record of each one. The record is what you will be asked for.
Duties on the fabric
Secured against illegal entry, and kept free of combustible material. Both are continuing obligations, not a one-off exercise on handback day.
Live services
Mains services are usually to be disconnected, excepting anything needed to run the alarm, the sprinklers or frost protection.
Days to activation
A typical trigger point; some wordings use forty-five. The clock generally runs from actual vacancy, which the owner may learn about late.
Why the inspection record matters more than the inspection
Insurers cannot verify that somebody walked the building. They can verify whether a contemporaneous record exists. A commercial property security regime that produces dated, timed, photographed reports is in a materially stronger position than one that produces a recollection, however diligent.
This is the least glamorous part of commercial property security and the part that most often decides a claim. It is also delivered as a by-product: a mobile patrol visit generates the evidence automatically, at every attendance.
Commercial property security and the meaning of occupancy
In Simmonds v Cockell (1920) occupancy was treated as requiring actual use rather than nominal presence, and in Winicofsky v Army & Navy General Assurance (1919) a temporary absence was held not to breach an occupancy condition. Leaving a desk and a kettle behind does not keep a building occupied; briefly locking up does not make it unoccupied.
Many policies contain a non-invalidation clause protecting an owner who genuinely did not know the building had emptied — but almost all require immediate notification once the owner does know. Delay is a separate and avoidable breach.
Commercial property security and the Insurance Act 2015
Most people buying commercial property security are working from insurance law that changed a decade ago. Before the Insurance Act 2015, breaching a warranty was catastrophic and permanent: the insurer's liability was discharged from the moment of breach, whether or not the breach related to the eventual loss, and whether or not it had been put right. The Act, which applies to business insurance, dismantled that.
What section 10 changed
Section 10(1) states that “any rule of law that breach of a warranty (express or implied) in a contract of insurance results in the discharge of the insurer's liability under the contract is abolished”. Section 10(2) replaces it with suspension: no liability for loss “occurring, or attributable to something happening, after a warranty… has been breached but before the breach has been remedied”. Section 10(4) preserves cover before the breach and after it is remedied.
Read section 10What section 11 changed
Section 11 applies to terms that would “tend to reduce the risk” of loss of a particular kind, at a particular location or at a particular time. Where such a term has not been complied with, section 11(2) prevents the insurer relying on that non-compliance, provided the insured “shows that the non-compliance with the term could not have increased the risk of the loss which actually occurred in the circumstances in which it occurred”.
Read section 11Why this is not the reprieve it sounds like
Read quickly, section 11 looks like a general escape from technical breaches. It is not, for three reasons that matter to commercial property security.
First, the burden sits on the insured, and proving a negative about a building nobody was watching is difficult. Second, the argument only works where the breach is genuinely unrelated — and a missed weekly inspection is hard to characterise as irrelevant to a fire or a water escape that ran undetected for a fortnight, because finding exactly that is what the inspection is for. Third, section 10 still suspends cover while a breach is unremedied.
In Lonham Group Ltd v Scotbeef Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 203 the Court of Appeal found for the insurer, holding that section 10 had no application because the breach of warranty had not been remedied, and that section 11 had no application on those facts. That case concerned trading conditions rather than security, but the mechanism it illustrates is the one an unoccupied buildings condition engages.
The Act made an unremedied breach survivable in principle and expensive to argue in practice. Complying with the condition costs a fraction of litigating whether the breach mattered.
Commercial property security duties that outlast the tenancy
Insurance is a contract. The duties below are not, and they cannot be transferred to a managing agent or a security contractor by writing it into a service agreement. They follow the property.
Commercial property security and the uninvited trespasser
The Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 sets the common duty of care to lawful visitors. The 1984 Act can impose a duty towards people who are not visitors at all, where the occupier knows of a danger, knows or has reasonable grounds to believe someone may come into its vicinity, and the risk is one against which they may reasonably be expected to offer protection. An empty building with a known open access point and known internal hazards engages all three limbs.
Councils can compel action on a neglected commercial building
Section 43 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 allows an authorised person to issue a community protection notice to “an individual aged 16 or over, or a body” where conduct is “having a detrimental effect, of a persistent or continuing nature, on the quality of life of those in the locality” and is unreasonable. A written warning must come first. The notice can require the recipient to “take reasonable steps to achieve specified results” — in practice, to secure the building. Under section 48, failing to comply without reasonable excuse is an offence: level 4 on the standard scale for an individual, currently £2,500, and a fine with no stated ceiling for a body corporate.
Read section 43The authority can do the work and send you the bill
Section 79 of the Building Act 1984 lets a local authority serve notice on the owner of a ruinous or dilapidated building requiring them to “execute such works of repair or restoration” or to “demolish the building or structure, or any part thereof, and remove any rubbish” arising. If the owner does not comply, the authority may carry out the works itself and recover its expenses.
Read section 79Officers must hold a valid SIA licence
Under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, anyone supplying contract manned guarding must hold a valid Security Industry Authority licence for the activity performed. Commercial property security is routinely audited on this point by insurers and corporate occupiers. Every AGS officer is SIA licensed, and the company is ICO registered under ZB329521 for the CCTV and visitor data this work generates.
What happens inside a building with no commercial property security
The failure modes are predictable, which is what makes them manageable. They are also sequential: each one makes the next more likely, and the sequence usually runs for weeks before anybody notices.
The commercial property security failure that becomes a water claim
The most expensive mechanism in vacant commercial property is not the theft itself. Copper pipework, tanks and cylinders are stripped for scrap value that is often trivial. What follows is not. Cut pipework on a live supply discharges continuously into a building nobody enters, and by the time anyone looks, the loss is a saturated floorplate, ruined services and a stripped ceiling void.
That is why mains isolation sits in the unoccupied condition alongside the security requirement: they are the same control from two directions. It is also why a claim that began as a break-in is often settled as an escape of water. Douglas Barnett of AXA has publicly described commercial escape of water losses exceeding a million pounds; the trigger for many is a lock that failed weeks earlier.
Unlawful occupation of commercial premises is a civil matter
Owners frequently assume the police will remove occupiers. In commercial buildings that is generally wrong. Recovering possession of non-residential premises is a civil process, and it takes time the owner does not control. Preventing entry costs a fraction of reversing it, which is the whole commercial argument for a patrol regime on a void.
Every stage above is visible on a weekly inspection and invisible from an alarm panel. An alarm reports an event. It does not report a missing downpipe, damp spreading across a suspended ceiling, or a rear fire door wedged open for a fortnight.
Arson: the commercial property security risk that ends the asset
Every other commercial property security failure on this page is recoverable. Fire in an empty commercial building frequently is not, and it is the one risk whose consequences reach well beyond the owner's balance sheet.
Fire and rescue services in England attended 13,679 fires in buildings other than dwellings in the year ending March 2026, up 3.7% on the 13,193 recorded the previous year. Total fires attended across all categories rose 19% over the same period, from 143,049 to 170,597.
What a commercial property security failure costs everyone else
The former Communisis printworks in Crewe is the case worth studying, because the consequences fell almost entirely on people with no interest in the property. On 9 August 2024 two young men deliberately set fire to a pile of cardboard inside the vacant building. Fifteen fire engines attended, with a high-reach extending turret, an aerial ladder platform, a high-volume pump and a water bowser; crews stayed several days damping down.
More than 350 residents were displaced from five surrounding streets. Structural damage to neighbouring terraced houses kept some out of their homes long afterwards, and an adjacent electrical substation was affected. Assistant Chief Fire Officer Steve Barnes said the fire had put lives at risk, not only those of firefighters but also the residents forced to leave their homes. James Evans, 19, and Justin Keeling, 18, were sentenced at Chester Crown Court on 21 May 2025 to 56 and 52 months respectively, Keeling with a consecutive 238 days for perverting the course of justice. Neither sentence rebuilt the street.
Fire services are now telling landlords directly
On 26 March 2026 the Arson Task Force — a partnership between Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service and Northamptonshire Police — warned owners ahead of the Easter holidays. Arson Reduction Coordinator Kelly Crockett said: “Building owners and landlords must ensure their properties are secured and regularly checked to mitigate risks.” The Task Force asked owners to repair broken doors and windows, fit better locks, board up unsafe access points and inspect properties during school breaks, noting the hazards inside derelict buildings: unstable floors, live electrical systems, flood risk and hazardous materials.
Read that as evidence rather than advice. Where a fire authority has publicly stated what commercial property security is expected of owners, an owner who did none of it is in a weaker position on foreseeability afterwards. Where a building cannot be secured quickly, or hot works are underway during refurbishment, a dedicated fire watch is the proportionate answer.
The vacancy data behind commercial property security decisions
Void risk is not evenly distributed, and the commercial property security response should not be either.
National vacancy, Q3 2025
The all-retail vacancy rate reported by Knight Frank, forecast to move towards roughly 12.4% by the end of 2026.
Retail parks
The strongest performing format in CBRE's 2026 outlook, with rents up 4.7% over five years.
Prime high street
Prime pitches and central London at or below 5%. The market is sharply polarised between prime and secondary stock.
Months of rates relief
Empty property relief in England runs three months for most commercial property, six for industrial, before full business rates resume.
Why the rates cliff shapes the commercial property security risk
The three-month relief window is a security fact as much as a fiscal one. As it closes, owners of secondary stock choose between paying full rates on an empty building, letting at a discount, or reducing it to a condition where it is no longer rateable. The last of those — stripping services, removing fixtures, opening the roof — produces exactly the building this article describes: nothing worth stealing, nothing worth occupying, and nothing to lose but the asset itself.
A note on the official statistics
The Commercial Victimisation Survey found 26% of business premises in England and Wales — around 409,000 — experienced crime in the twelve months surveyed, with theft at 14%, burglary including attempts at 8% and vandalism at 8%. Those are the 2023 findings, published 11 September 2024, and they remain the most recent: the survey is paused while the Home Office reviews its methods. Owners are making commercial property security decisions on business crime data that is now three years old, which is a good reason to weight your own incident history above the national picture.
Which commercial property security services are proportionate?
Proportionate means matched to the void, not to the rateable value. These are the arrangements AGS Security deploys for commercial property and unoccupied property clients.
Mobile patrols and inspection reporting
The default answer for most voids. Scheduled and randomised visits, internal and external checks, and a timed, dated, photographed report after every attendance — the evidence the policy condition asks for.
Key holding
Keys held securely off site, so no member of staff attends an empty building alone at night and contractor access is controlled and logged.
Alarm response
An SIA licensed officer attends the activation, establishes the cause, secures the building and reports. Without it, an alarm is a notification with nobody at the other end.
CCTV monitoring
Live monitoring with audio challenge, suited to buildings with a defined perimeter and a persistent out-of-hours problem. Effective where intervention can follow; decorative where it cannot.
Static manned guarding
Continuous presence for prime assets, high-value fit-outs, a live occupation attempt, or the period around a contentious lease end.
K9 handlers and fire watch
K9 cover for large or repeatedly targeted sites where one officer cannot hold the footprint, and fire watch where detection is isolated or sprinklers are drained.
Commercial property security records and the claim you have not made yet
Commercial property security evidence comes down to one practical question: on the day of the loss, what can you produce?
An owner who can hand the loss adjuster a run of weekly reports — each timed, dated and photographed, each naming the officer, each noting the state of the doors, the meters and the roof — is not arguing about section 11. They are demonstrating compliance and moving to quantum.
An owner who can produce an invoice for patrols but no reports is in the position section 11 was written for, carrying the burden of proof. That is a bad moment to discover what your commercial property security contract actually delivered.
A commercial property security checklist for owners and managing agents
Worth going through with the broker in the room and your commercial property security provider on the phone, because half of these are policy questions rather than security questions.
- Have you read the unoccupied buildings condition in the current policy, and do you know the trigger period?
- Does it bite from actual vacancy or from notification, and how would you learn a tenant had gone?
- Are weekly inspections happening, and does a written record of each one exist?
- Do the records show times, dates, the officer attending and photographs, or only that a visit was billed?
- Have mains services been isolated, except those needed for alarms, sprinklers and frost protection?
- Is combustible material — waste, pallets, stripped-out fittings, fly-tipping — being cleared, not just noted?
- Is every access point secured, including roof access, service risers, rear yards and the contractor's door?
- If the alarm activates at 3am, who physically attends, and how quickly?
- Can your provider evidence a valid SIA licence for every officer who has attended?
- Has the insurer been notified in writing of the vacancy, and have you kept the confirmation?
AGS covers commercial property nationally, with regional detail for the West Midlands, East Midlands, London and the South East, and the full list on the locations page.
Commercial property security: frequently asked questions
What does an unoccupied buildings condition require of commercial property security?
Commercial policies typically require the building to be inspected once a week with a written record kept, secured against illegal entry, kept free of combustible material and disconnected from mains services. Wordings vary, so the policy itself is the authority.
Does breaching a security warranty void the whole policy?
No longer. Section 10 of the Insurance Act 2015 abolished the rule that breach of warranty discharged the insurer's liability. Cover is suspended for losses occurring while the breach is unremedied and revives once it is put right.
Can an insurer refuse a fire claim because an inspection was missed?
Possibly. Section 11 prevents reliance on non-compliance where the insured shows it could not have increased the risk of the loss that actually occurred, but the burden is on the insured, and a missed inspection is hard to separate from a loss that ran undetected.
How often should a vacant commercial building be inspected?
Weekly is the common commercial property security standard, with a written record of each inspection. Higher-risk buildings, or those with a live intrusion or occupation problem, generally need more frequent attendance than the policy minimum.
Can a council force an owner to secure an empty commercial building?
Yes. A community protection notice under section 43 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 can require an owner to take specified steps after a written warning. Breach is an offence under section 48, carrying an unlimited fine for a body corporate.
Which areas does AGS Security cover?
AGS Security covers commercial property across England, Scotland and Wales from its base in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, providing manned guarding, mobile patrols, key holding, alarm response, CCTV monitoring, K9 handlers and fire watch.
Contact AGS Security about commercial property security
Tell us the building, the expected void period and what your policy asks for of commercial property security, and we will set out what cover is proportionate. Site assessments are carried out without charge or obligation.
Creative Industries Centre, Glaisher Drive, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, WV10 9TG
England, Scotland and Wales — check your area
About the publisher. AGS Security is the trading name of Albrighton Group Services Ltd, a security contractor registered in England and Wales, company number 13057321, registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration ZB329521.
The company provides manned guarding, gatehouse security, mobile patrols, K9 dog handling, CCTV monitoring, key holding, fire watch and alarm response to commercial property, construction, residential development, civil engineering, industrial and warehousing clients across England, Scotland and Wales.
Head office: Creative Industries Centre, Glaisher Drive, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, WV10 9TG. Telephone 0333 577 1777.
Arrange a commercial property security assessment
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This article is general information about commercial property security and the duties applying to commercial premises in Great Britain. It is not legal advice, and it is not advice on any particular insurance contract — wordings differ and your own policy is the authority on what it requires. Sources: Insurance Act 2015 sections 10 and 11, Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 sections 43 and 48, and Building Act 1984 section 79, all as published on legislation.gov.uk; Lonham Group Ltd v Scotbeef Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 203; unoccupied buildings condition practice and the cases Simmonds v Cockell (1920) and Winicofsky v Army & Navy General Assurance (1919) as discussed in published insurance law commentary; fire figures from Home Office fire and rescue incident statistics for the year ending March 2026; Crewe printworks details and sentencing from published fire service and court reporting; the Arson Task Force quotation from Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service, 26 March 2026; vacancy rates from Knight Frank and CBRE for Q3 2025 and the 2026 outlook; business crime figures from the Commercial Victimisation Survey 2023, published 11 September 2024; empty property rates relief from GOV.UK. Duties under the Occupiers' Liability Acts 1957 and 1984 and the Private Security Industry Act 2001, and the terms of your own insurance, should be considered with your legal, broking and health and safety advisers.