Aluminium systems company, Beaufort Secure, has become one of only two aluminium profile suppliers to date to be awarded the prestigious Secure by Design (SBD) licence for its entire range of products.

At the same time, the company has initiated a Group Scheme, whereby its fabricator customers who want to bring the benefits of SBD to their own finished products, can take advantage of the considerable administrative support offered under the Scheme by Beaufort when they submit their applications.

“Two of our customers – Quantum Windows and Frame Fast – have secured SBD status through the Scheme, said Russell Yates, Beaufort’s Technical Manager.

“Having been through the process ourselves, we are in an excellent position to help guide our customers through the application process. Providing their products match the levels of security we displayed when submitting our profiles as part of finished windows, then they should have no difficulty being awarded an SBD licence.”

By applying through the Group Scheme, whilst it incorporates the same rigorous UKAS product testing Beaufort had to undergo, fabricators also benefit from paying significantly discounted costs compared to if they had gone for this accreditation on their own..

Russell Yates continued : “Our SBD licence, taken in conjunction with Beaufort achieving Kitemark accreditation recently, is as clear an indication as you can get of our commitment to driving-up industry standards,”. “We regard both as establishing significant benchmarks for us to maintain, and which we anticipate many of our customers will join us in achieving.”

For SBD, Mick Reynolds, ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Development Officer, said : Inevitably, secure windows are key to preventing opportunistic crime. In that context, having Beaurfort Secure as an SBD licensee is excellent news for architects and specifiers who want aluminium windows as part of their projects.

SBD is owned by the Association of Chief Police Officers for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ACPO) and by ACPOS in Scotland. It is managed by ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives (ACPO CPI) from its offices in central London.

Its underlying ethos is the encouragement of the building industry and the public to ‘design-out’ crime from buildings at the earliest stage, thus reducing opportunistic crime and the fear of crime.

SBD is supported by the Home Office and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

As an SBD licence holder, Beaufort is now part of the whole initiative and can use the SBD logo and the strap-line ‘Police preferred specification’ on its stationery, literature, vehicles and products, as can Beaufort customers who become licence holders.

The credibility of SBD rests on the stringent levels of testing products have to undergo, during which they have to show high levels of security and resistance to criminal attack. The tests are devised by third part testing houses and must at least measure up to, if not exceed, Building Standards. For windows this is BS 7950:1997, which sets out specifications for enhanced security required by domestic windows. This must be backed up by BS 4873, which applies specifically to aluminium windows.

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