Additionally, Selectamark has been involved in 125 police and/or local authority saturation marking schemes, of which a large proportion has been exclusively for schools.

In the past 2 years, Selectamark, in conjunction with the Police, have marked almost 200,000 items of School property and in the process helped secure over 1,500 schools.

Last year large schemes in the West Midlands and Derbyshire (where every school in the county received a marking kit) proved hugely successful, and these were followed by Selectamark’s most recent schools property marking scheme, in Havering.

Just before Christmas 2005 Havering Education in partnership with Havering Community Safety Partnership launched a property marking scheme involving Selectamark’s permanent visible marking system, to reduce the number of burglaries at schools in the borough. All computer equipment, projectors and other high value items in Havering’s schools were chemically etched with Selectamark to deter theft (which amounted to around 23,000 items!). Havering council were keen to introduce Selectamark to their schools after discovering that other locations in the area which were already using the system had had no burglaries since its introduction.

Detective Inspector Sean Crotty from Havering Police said: ‘Schools have been seen as a soft target in the past, that is no longer the case. We will be visiting places we know are used to dispose of stolen goods such as car boot sales and actively looking for stolen goods which are marked. This intiative will make it a Merry Christmas for schools in Havering and will make it very difficult to get away with burglary in this borough.’