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12TH OCT 2008
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 The number of people who have been robbed of things like mobile phones has rocketed in one year. So you might want to consider a home contents insurance policy that will also cover your property if it gets stolen on the streets.
You see people these days talking on their top-of-the-range mobile phones or listening to their costly MP3 players everywhere. So it can come as no surprise that latest police statistics reveal that the number of street muggings and robberies increased by 8% last year.
Statistics from the British Crime Survey of 45,000 people shows that the number of gunpoint robberies jumped by 10% for 2005. Perhaps the most startling result from the research is that robberies alone have rocketed by 22% to 311,000. This is the highest level in four years. You have a situation where property is being stolen more in public places, but less from homes, according to the numbers, which says the rate of household burglaries dropped by 7%.
So is the number of people carrying mobile phones really to blame for the rise in robberies and muggings? Home Secretary John Reid thinks so. He has been reported in the media as saying that the rise in this sort of crime has been driven by the number of young people carrying expensive goods like mobile phones and MP3 players with them.
Most mobile phone companies are quite insistent with customers of the benefits of taking out insurance should their phone get stolen. But what many people do not realise is that these policies only usually cover phone theft, rather than the loss of your property. And you often do not actually need this insurance anyway because your property might already be covered for these sort of street thefts through your home contents insurance.
Association of British Insurers spokesperson Kelly Ostler says many home contents policies offer an All Risks Extension. An All Risks Extension is the technical term for cover of property taken outside the house.
“You have to check your household contents insurance has got it,” she says.
Ostler reminds people, however, that insurance or no insurance, people also need to take simple precautions with their property when they take it outside the home. “We tell people to take care and use your common sense when you are going out – not to leave your mobile phone or your mp3 player on the table or a bar.”
Provided by The Student Zone (United Kingdom)
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