Factory security: protecting manufacturing sites, stock and machinery out of hours

Last updated 1 November 2026. A factory is a building full of expensive machinery, a yard full of raw materials and a store full of finished goods, and for a large part of every week nobody is there. On a weekday the site is busy: shifts changing over, delivery vehicles at the gate, walkways full of people, machines running and offices lit. When the last shift clocks off, the lines stop and the gates close. At the weekend, over a bank holiday or during the summer and Christmas shutdowns, a factory can stand empty for days at a time. That is when most break-ins, thefts and deliberate fires happen.

This guide sets out the main security risks to UK factories and manufacturing sites, what the official figures show about crime and fire, why factories are a target, what police design guidance and government fire safety guidance say, where cameras should watch, and how AI on the CCTV cameras already on site can watch the gate, the stores, the fence and the production hall out of hours. It is written for factory owners, operations and site managers, facilities and health and safety teams, and the installers who look after their cameras.

What are the main security risks to a factory?

A small engineering workshop on a trading estate and a large food or chemicals plant with its own gatehouse have little in common. But most factories face the same four kinds of risk, and almost all of them peak when the machines are switched off.

Four risks

• Break-ins to the building. Roller shutters forced or left part-open, fire exit doors attacked from outside, and roofs and roof lights used as a way in, usually on the sides of the building that nobody passes at night. Tools, electronics, copper, cable and finished goods are the usual targets, but thieves will take whatever is easy to carry and sell.
• Theft from the site. Metal stock, coils, offcuts and scrap, drums and bulk materials, pallets of finished goods waiting for collection, fuel from tanks and vehicles, and plant and tools left in the yard. Much of it is stored outside, at the back, where it is easiest to reach.
• Damage and arson. Vandalism to vehicles, machinery, windows and cladding, and fires set deliberately, often in a skip, a waste bin or a pallet stack against a wall. Damage to a single critical machine or control panel can stop production for weeks.
• Fire from the process. Factories handle heat, sparks, dusts, oils and solvents every day. Swarf, sawdust, oily rags and offcuts left after a shift, a hot work job that smoulders for an hour, or an overheating motor can turn into a fire in an empty building.

These risks overlap. Someone in the materials store at night to steal metal may also start a fire to cover their tracks, and a shutter or roof light damaged in a failed attempt and not repaired is an invitation to come back. That is why factory security works best when it is planned for the whole site, from the gate to the back fence and up to the roof, rather than door by door.

The cost of an incident at a factory is often much bigger than the value of what was taken. A stolen cable run, a smashed control cabinet or a fire in the waste area can mean lost production, missed orders, overtime to catch up, unhappy customers and a long insurance claim. For a manufacturer, the real loss is downtime.

What do the figures show about crime against factories?

The Home Office measures crime against business premises through the Commercial Victimisation Survey, which interviews premises across England and Wales, including manufacturing. Because the manufacturing sample in any one year is small, the Home Office combined the 2022 and 2023 surveys to give more reliable sector estimates in its additional data tables.

In figures

Across the two years combined, 22% of manufacturing premises had been a victim of at least one crime in the 12 months before interview. One in ten (10%) had experienced theft, including 5% who had experienced theft by unknown persons, against 4% theft by a customer and 1% theft by an employee. Eight per cent had experienced burglary, including attempts, and 8% vandalism to the premises or property. Four per cent had experienced fraud.

Those figures come with a caution. The Home Office says that small samples for some sectors mean the estimates carry a lot of uncertainty, which is why the years were combined, and the single-year figures for manufacturing move around a lot. Treat them as a guide to the size of the problem rather than a precise rate. They also only count crimes that premises knew about and chose to tell the survey about.

The same survey shows a clear link between the size of a site and the chance of being a victim.

By size

In the 2023 survey, 42% of medium premises (10 to 49 employees) and 39% of large premises (50 or more) had experienced at least one crime, compared with 24% of small premises (1 to 9). The Home Office suggests this is possibly because larger businesses have a greater exposure to risk, such as more stock or equipment on the premises. That describes most factories well.

Only 55% of victim premises across all sectors reported at least one crime to the police, and only 34% reported every crime. Under-reporting matters for a factory. If an attempt on a shutter or a few coils missing from the yard are never reported, the police cannot see that the same site has been visited three times in a month, and nor can the neighbouring units.

For context, the Office for National Statistics reported that police-recorded burglary in England and Wales fell by 6% to 222,304 offences in the year ending June 2026. That figure covers homes and businesses together, so it says little about factories on its own, but it shows that burglary remains one of the most common crimes the police deal with.

Why are factories a target?

Part of the answer is what a factory holds. Raw materials such as copper, brass, aluminium and stainless steel have a ready scrap value. Tools, welders, compressors and test equipment are easy to sell. Finished goods waiting for collection are already packed for transport. Fuel, batteries and cable are taken from almost any site that leaves them unwatched.

Site plan

The other part is layout. Factories are designed around the process, not around being watched:

• Long blank walls. Production halls usually have few windows, so the sides and back of the building are out of sight of the offices and the road.
• Stores outside, at the back. Metal stock, drums, pallets and skips are often kept against the rear or side wall, close to the fence, where they are easiest to reach and hardest to see.
• Big doors. Roller shutters and loading doors are built for vehicles and goods. Left part-open for air on a hot day, or damaged and not repaired, they are an easy way in.
• Roofs and roof lights. Many factories have large, low, flat or shallow roofs with roof lights, reached from a wall, a skip, a pallet stack or an external stair.
• Many people with access. Shift workers, agency staff, cleaners, maintenance contractors, delivery drivers and visitors all need to come and go, which makes it harder to spot someone who should not be there.
• Predictable quiet hours. Shift times, weekends and shutdowns are easy to learn by watching from the road.

Factories on industrial estates share some of these risks with their neighbours: a shared access road, poor lighting and few people around at night. Our industrial estate security guide covers multi-let estates in more detail, and our warehouse security guide covers sites built around docks, yards and trailers.

Why are weekends and shutdowns the riskiest time?

A factory running a single day shift is empty for roughly two thirds of every weekday and for the whole weekend. Add bank holidays, a two-week summer shutdown and a Christmas shutdown, and most of the hours in a year are hours when nobody is in the building. Even a site running two or three shifts usually stops at the weekend.

Quiet hours

Shutdowns bring their own risks:

• Long gaps between checks. A keyholder who drives past once a day cannot see what happens in the other 23 hours, and a break-in on the first night of a shutdown may not be found for a week.
• Contractors on site. Shutdowns are when maintenance, installation and building work get done, so there are unfamiliar people and vehicles on site, gates left open, temporary access to roofs and hot work in progress.
• Stock built up. Finished goods are often built ahead of a shutdown and wait in the store or the yard for collection, and raw materials may be delivered ready for start-up.
• Waste left behind. Skips filled during a clear-out or a strip-out can sit against the building for the whole break.
• Systems switched off. Extraction, process alarms and some lighting may be turned off, and nobody is there to notice a smell of burning or a sound that should not be there.

Plan for shutdowns like a project: agree who holds the keys and who responds to alerts, list the contractors expected each day, decide which gates stay locked, empty the skips and move waste away from the building before the break, and make sure the cameras covering the stores, the yard and the back fence are working and watched. Our out-of-hours site security checklist is a good starting point for the close-down.

What does police design guidance say about factory security?

The police crime prevention initiative Secured by Design publishes a Commercial Guide covering industrial and commercial buildings. It is written mainly for new buildings and refurbishments, but most of the principles apply to any factory.

Design guidance

• One controlled entrance. The guide treats the main entrance as the first line of defence: access to the site should be controlled, with as few other entrances as the business needs. Routes for visitors and vehicles should be clear, and staff parking should be in view of occupied offices.
• Roofs. The guide says roofs are vulnerable to intrusion and vandalism, and that access to a roof makes crimes from burglary to arson easier. Where several units share a roof, one breach can put them all at risk. Low flat roofs are easily reached, and intruders may cut through the roof deck or force roof lights.
• No climbing aids. The guide warns that rainwater pipes, boundary walls, adjacent buildings, handrails and external stairs can all help someone onto a roof, and recommends designing them out, for example with square-section rainwater pipes fitted flush to the wall. On a working factory site, stacked pallets and skips against a wall do the same job.
• Blank elevations. Windowless walls with no natural surveillance should be kept away from public areas where possible, or protected so people cannot gather against them unseen.

For an existing factory, that translates into a short list of jobs: check that every gate and door is locked out of hours and that only one is used routinely, walk the outside of the building looking for anything that would help someone onto the roof, move skips and pallets away from walls, and make sure the back and sides of the building are lit and watched. A police Designing Out Crime Officer can advise, especially on a new build or an extension.

ProtectUK, the police counter-terrorism and security advice service, adds the management basics for any site with vehicles: keep keys in a secure locker, sign visitors in and out, and control vehicles that are not authorised to be there. Those apply as much to a factory yard as to a transport depot.

How big a risk is fire in a factory?

Home Office fire statistics for England record fires in industrial premises, a category that includes manufacturing and processing plants as well as warehouses, bulk storage, laboratories and vehicle repair. In the year ending March 2026, fire and rescue services attended 1,806 primary fires in industrial premises, about five a day, up from 1,669 the year before.

Fire figures

Of those 1,806 fires, 169 were recorded as deliberate and 1,637 as accidental. They caused 135 non-fatal casualties and 2 deaths. The Home Office notes that fire data moved to a new collection system in November 2025, so recent figures may be revised slightly. The figures also cover only fires that the fire and rescue service attended; smaller fires put out by staff are not counted.

The government’s fire safety risk assessment guide for factories and warehouses, written to help the responsible person meet the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, gives arson a section of its own. It says that of all the risk-reduction measures, the most benefit may come from efforts to reduce the threat from arson. Its advice includes:

• Light the outside of the premises and secure the perimeter.
• Secure entry points, including windows and the roof.
• Regularly remove combustible rubbish and waste.
• Do not place skips next to the building, and keep wheeled bins in a compound separated from it, so they cannot be moved against a wall and set alight.
• Encourage staff to report people acting suspiciously, and remove entry rights from dismissed staff.
• Make sure the fire alarm and fire detection are monitored and acted on.

The guide also warns to be suspicious of small ‘accidental’ fires, which may be a sign of someone testing the site, and notes that deliberate fires can develop faster than accidental ones.

Fire measures

Many factories also handle dangerous substances. The Health and Safety Executive’s guidance on the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations (DSEAR) lists examples including solvents, paints and varnishes, flammable gases such as LPG, dusts from machining and sanding, dusts from foodstuffs, and pressurised gases. Employers must find out what dangerous substances are present and what the risks are, control or remove those risks, reduce the effects of any incident, plan for emergencies, and inform and train employees. Where an explosive atmosphere may occur, the area must be classified and ignition sources avoided there.

Security and fire are linked. A fire set deliberately in a skip against the back wall, a smouldering pile of swarf or sawdust left after the last shift, or a hot work job that was not checked before the site closed can all grow for hours before anyone notices in an empty building. Our arson prevention guide and hot works fire risk guide cover both in more detail. Where batteries or electric vehicles are charged on site, our lithium-ion battery storage guide applies too.

Skips and waste, Saturday 04:52

Where should cameras watch on a factory site?

Most factories already have CCTV. The question is whether the cameras cover the places where things go wrong, and whether anyone sees what they record before the morning. A useful check is to walk the site at night with the camera views on a phone and ask, for each risk, which camera would see it.

• The gate and entrance road. Every vehicle and most people should pass here. A camera here sees arrivals out of hours and the direction they are travelling.
• The yard and loading doors. Where goods go in and out, and where vehicles back up to the building.
• The materials store and scrap area. Metals, drums, coils and bulk materials, usually at the back.
• The skips and waste area. For deliberate fires, accidental fires and people climbing on skips to reach the roof.
• The rear and side fences. Where someone on foot is most likely to climb in, away from the road.
• The blank walls and roof access points. Rainwater pipes, low roofs and anything stacked against the building.
• Inside the production hall. Machines, tool stores, control panels and finished goods, and anyone who got in or stayed behind.
• Fuel, gas and battery stores. For theft, tampering and fire.

Coverage

Each camera needs a clear view and enough light or infrared at night, and some areas are better covered by a second camera than by one camera trying to see too much. Our commercial burglary prevention guide covers break-ins more generally, and our plant and machinery theft guide covers equipment kept in the yard.

How does AI on existing CCTV protect a factory?

Recording-only CCTV shows what happened after a forced shutter or missing stock is found on Monday morning. AI detection watches the picture live and tells someone while it is happening. Woodcock AI connects to the IP cameras and recorders already on the site, over RTSP or ONVIF, including Hikvision, and runs on an edge server on site or on a cloud server. On each camera view you draw the rules for that part of the factory.

Zones and lines

• Polygon zones. Draw a zone of any shape over the materials store, the yard, the skips or the hall floor, and leave out the access road, the vents and the areas where night-shift staff are expected.
• Direction-aware lines. Draw a line along the inside of the fence or across the entrance road, and choose which direction counts, so someone climbing in raises an alert while traffic leaving is ignored.
• People and vehicles. Detection counts people and vehicles, so steam, sparks, rain, headlights, cats and blowing packaging do not.
• Smoke and flame. The same cameras watch for smoke and flame around the clock, from the skips and the waste area to the production hall.
• Schedules. Each zone and line has its own hours, so the store can be armed from the end of the last shift and the fence all weekend.
• Alerts with the clip. Each alert arrives in the app and by email with a short clip and an AI description of what happened, so the person receiving it can decide quickly what to do.

The system is self-learning. It learns each camera on your site, so the steam from an extraction vent, the yard light that switches on at dusk and the night-shift fitter who walks the same route every hour become part of the normal view, and every detection has a feedback button: marking an alert as correct or false feeds into retraining for your site. Woodcock AI has been in development for years and is now running on customer sites across the UK.

Woodcock AI does not read number plates or identify people. It flags that a person or vehicle is somewhere it should not be, and the clip shows what happened.

Coming next: Ask your cameras Coming soon, early 2027, which will let you ask the system questions about what your cameras have seen.

What does AI detection look like in each part of the factory?

The rules depend on the part of the site. Choose an area to see an example of how a camera there is set up and what an alert looks like.

How does AI detection compare with other factory security measures?

No single measure protects a factory on its own. Fences, gates, shutters and alarms slow people down and detect entry to the building; people and cameras see what is happening outside it. The table compares the usual options.

Most sites end up with a combination: physical security and an intruder alarm for the building, and cameras with AI detection covering the gate, the yard, the stores, the fence and the hall, with a named keyholder or a monitoring centre to respond.

How do you stop false alarms on factory cameras?

Factories are hard places for basic motion detection. Steam and fumes drift past cameras, yard lights flicker, cladding reflects headlights, plastic wrap blows across the yard, and night-shift staff, cleaners and maintenance crews are meant to be there. A system that alerts on every pixel that changes soon gets ignored.

False alarms

• Count only people and vehicles, so steam, rain, shadows and animals are ignored.
• Draw zones that leave out the noise: extraction vents, the public road, flags, trees and the walkways night-shift staff use.
• Use direction on lines, so only people coming in over the fence count, not people walking along it inside.
• Set schedules that match the shifts, so the hall is only armed when the lines are stopped and the building is locked.
• Use the feedback button to mark false alerts, so the system learns your site.

Our guide to reducing CCTV false alarms covers this in more detail.

How should detection schedules match the shift pattern?

A factory’s normal pattern is set by its shifts. The cameras should be armed when the site, or a part of it, is meant to be empty, and quiet when people are expected to be there.

Schedules

• Materials store and yard: armed from the end of the last shift until the first one starts, and all weekend.
• Rear and side fences: armed overnight, all weekend and every shutdown day, since nobody should be climbing a fence at any time.
• Inside the production hall: armed once the building is locked; if a night shift works in one part of the hall, leave that part out of the zone.
• Gate: an inbound vehicle line armed out of hours, with booked deliveries and contractors planned around it.
• Smoke and flame: on around the clock, every day.

Before a shutdown, review the schedules: add extra days, and check the contractor list so that a booked crew at 07:00 on a Saturday is expected and a person at the stores at 02:18 is not.

Who responds when an alert fires at night?

An alert is only useful if someone acts on it. Before the cameras go live, agree who receives which alerts and at what hours, what they should do, and who they call. For most factories that is a small rota of keyholders or managers, a monitoring centre, or both.

Response

• Check the clip first. The clip and the AI description usually show whether it is a person, a vehicle or smoke, and where.
• Call 999 for a crime in progress or a fire. Give the address, what you can see on the clip and where on the site it is.
• Never go alone. A keyholder should not go to the site alone to confront intruders; wait for the police or a security response.
• Review every alert. Mark it correct or false, and fix what it revealed: a gap in the fence, a skip against a wall, a shutter left open.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council requirements for security systems set out how police respond to alarms. Intruder alarm systems that meet the requirements can be given a unique reference number (URN) for police response, and the policy says response is withdrawn if a system with a URN generates three false calls in a rolling 12 months. That is another reason to keep false alerts down and to have alerts checked by a person before the police are called.

How do you manage staff, contractors and visitors?

A factory has more people with legitimate access than most sites, and many incidents involve someone who knew the site. Good management closes most of those gaps:

• Keys and codes. Keep vehicle and building keys in a secure locker, keep a record of who holds keys and alarm codes, and change codes when people leave.
• Leavers. Remove access cards, codes and keys from people who leave, especially after a dismissal.
• Visitors and drivers. Sign visitors in and out, keep delivery drivers to the areas they need, and agree booking times for collections.
• Contractors. Keep a daily list of contractors expected on site, especially during shutdowns, with permits for hot work and a fire watch afterwards.
• Close-down checks. At the end of the last shift, check that shutters and fire exits are shut, machines and extraction are safe, waste is cleared and skips are away from the building.

Access

Cameras support these checks rather than replacing them. A clip of a shutter left open at 22:40 is a prompt to fix the close-down routine, not just a security alert.

How does data protection apply to factory CCTV?

Factory cameras see staff, agency workers, contractors, visitors and sometimes the public road. CCTV that captures people is covered by data protection law, and the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on video surveillance expects you to have a clear purpose, to tell people with signs before they enter the area being recorded, to keep footage only as long as you need it for that purpose and to keep it secure. Where the processing is likely to be high risk, a data protection impact assessment is expected. Staff should be told how cameras on site are used.

Polygon zones help here too. A zone over the materials store or the rear fence keeps detection to that area, even when the camera can see the road or the next site. Woodcock AI detects people and vehicles in zones and on lines, and smoke and flame. It does not use facial recognition, identify who anyone is or read number plates. Our AI CCTV and GDPR guide covers this in more detail.

How do you get started?

Start with the basics the design guide, ProtectUK and the fire safety guide set out: one controlled gate, secure shutters, doors and roofs, good lighting, keys locked away, visitors and contractors signed in, waste cleared and skips away from the building, and dangerous substances assessed. Then map the cameras already on the site: what each one covers, what it sees at night, and where crime, damage or fire has happened before.

Layers

Our site assessment looks at the cameras already on your factory, the gate, stores, fences and hall most at risk, and the zones, lines and schedules that would cover them. It also tells you honestly where a camera cannot do the job. If you want to see it working first, we can run a live test on your cameras: we connect two or three of them for about a fortnight, so you see alerts from your own site before you decide. We can also arrange an on-site demo.

What are the limits of cameras at a factory?

Limits

• A camera needs a view. It cannot see behind a stack of stock, round the end of the building or into a part of the hall it does not point at.
• It needs light or infrared at night. Check what each camera actually sees in the dark, including the far end of the materials store and the back fence.
• It needs power and a connection. If either goes off, cameras and alerts stop, so protect the recorder, the network and the power supply, especially during shutdowns when power may be isolated.
• It detects; it does not stop anyone. Fences, gates, locks and shutters still have to do that.
• It does not replace fire safety systems. Smoke detection on cameras is an early warning on top of the fire alarm, sprinklers where fitted, the fire risk assessment, DSEAR controls and the emergency plan.
• It does not read number plates or identify people. It flags people and vehicles in zones and on lines; the clip shows what happened.
• Someone has to respond. An alert is only useful if someone acts on it.

Sources

• Home Office, Crime against businesses: findings from the 2023 Commercial Victimisation Survey, and the additional data tables (Table 47, manufacturing, 2022 and 2023 combined).
• Home Office, Fire statistics data tables (FIRE0301, year ending March 2026, published 22 July 2026).
• Office for National Statistics, Crime in England and Wales: year ending June 2026 (22 October 2026).
• Secured by Design, Commercial Guide 2025.
• GOV.UK, Fire safety risk assessment: factories and warehouses.
• Health and Safety Executive, Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations (DSEAR).
• ProtectUK, Site security.
• National Police Chiefs’ Council, Police Operational Advice and Security Industry Requirements for Response to Security Systems (March 2024).
• Information Commissioner’s Office, Guidance on video surveillance, including CCTV.

We have summarised these sources in our own words. Always read the current versions in full. This page is general guidance, not legal, fire safety, insurance or security advice; the police, your fire risk assessor, your insurer, your monitoring centre and a competent installer decide what applies to your site.

Frequently asked questions

Last reviewed 1 November 2026