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For those of you too young to remember the heyday of British safe making, or if you simply cannot recall the facts, let me paint a brief picture of the industry as it was 20 years ago. There were no pan-European standards for testing and rating safes. There was no EN 1143. The major safe makers were John Tann (the world's first), Chubb (the first company to patent a thief-resistant safe), SLS (at the time the new kids on the block) and a clutch of smaller-scale manufacturers.

There was also a good deal of so-called 'badge engineering' going on back then. Chatwood Milner and Hobbs Hart safes were in fact Chubb products, while both Stratford and Ratner units had been made by John Tann.

Meantime, French manufacturer Fichet Bauche and the Swedish company Rosengrens were making some headway into the UK market, but overall their sales were relatively small. Other overseas manufacturers including Israeli concern ISM and Lord Safes of Australia dipped their tentacles into the British market but quickly withdrew them again.

British safes and vaults were considered to be the finest in the world, with Chubb and Tann sharing the honours as they exported their wares to every corner of the globe.

From drawing board to testing
Competition was always fierce, with each manufacturer spending a small fortune on research and development, producing new barrier materials, re-locking devices, locking and boltwork systems.

Senior insurers were involved at each and every stage, from the drawing board through to prototype testing. Their role was essential, as they'd ultimately have to advise their respective underwriters as to how these new safes should be rated. Each insurance company had its own jealously guarded rating list, with risk surveyors using these in-house lists to specify the level of indemnity for any given safe.

Endeavouring to ensure that a safe would be listed by the major British insurers was an expensive business. Prototypes had to be tested in front of an invited audience of senior surveyors who travelled to the test site in first class. Principal manufacturers employed insurance liaison managers to constantly visit chief surveyors in a bid to persuade them of the quality and strength of their latest models – all the while pushing them to increase their indemnity limits. Factory tours by insurance personnel occurred on a weekly basis.

Costs were even higher for foreign manufacturers who would fly chief surveyors to Paris, Stockholm or some other continental destination for several days of testing accompanied by lavish corporate entertainment.

There were other external safe rating guides, the most famous – and one that I played some small part in producing – being the Levy List published by the J W Levy Group, at the time a leading light in the UK safe retailing sector. For many security surveyors this publication was viewed as 'The Bible', even though it could not be shown to be entirely unbiased (the Levy Group chairman Josh Levy also being a director of John Tann).

Taking heed of the experts
The ongoing desire to make the best safes in the world forced the pace of development. Added to this was a thorn in the flesh of the industry – namely a renegade safe engineer with a mission. If he was nothing else, Roy Saunders was a brilliant self-publicist. Saunders was determined to keep British manufacturers on their toes, and constantly found new ways of opening their safes. In fairness, he'd openly advise a given manufacturer that he'd spotted a weakness in their product design.

Predictably, manufacturers would reject Roy's observations. Undaunted, he'd travel the length and breadth of the land speaking to security associations, showing slides of his attacks, demonstrating the tools he'd developed to gain entry and generally undermine confidence in new safes.

Eventually, the manufacturers were backed into a corner and, forced to accept Saunders' findings, would duly modify their products. It's almost certainly the case that some of the safes developed during the 1980s were made to be Roy Saunders-proof rather than to defeat the criminal safe crackers.

One way or another, then, the British safe industry made products that no-one else in the world could touch for quality and security. Company teams of export sales people travelled the world in style, plying their wares with great success. Visitors to the factories on home shores would witness vault doors being manufactured for central banks in many of the world's capital cities. It's also fair to say, though, that British companies were so convin-ced of their stranglehold on world markets that they had become more than a little arrogant.

The few remaining British safe manufacturers are paying a small fortune to have their products tested in compliance with CEN standards, only to see their margins slashed as they desperately attempt to compete with cheap imports

Bleak outlook on home shores
Today, the scene is very different indeed. Chubb's safe factory in Wolverhampton lies empty. Their products are now imported from Indonesia. Tann Safes have become the province of Rosengrens and are now made in Sweden. The company's presence in the UK is limited to a small office in the Home Counties. Indeed, Chubb, Tann, Rosengrens and Fichet are now all owned by the giant Gunnebo conglomerate. Cut-price safes are pouring into the UK market from China, Korea, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and elsewhere.

The few remaining British safe manufacturers are paying a small fortune to have their products tested in compliance with CEN standards, only to see their margins slashed as they desperately scramble to compete with cheap imports.

Where did it all go wrong? Back in the heyday referred to at the outset, there were already rumblings of discontent among insurers. Why should their senior personnel be involved in assisting safe makers to develop better safes?

Why should they constantly be looking over their shoulders to see if rival insurance companies were offering higher ratings in order to lure their policy holders away? What they wanted was an independent organisation to set standards, test safes in a regulated manner and issue certified ratings by which they could all abide. They would all sing from the same hymn sheet. Costs would be saved. Life would be good.

On the face of it this seemed to be a wholly reasonable proposition. However, some commentators felt there were inherent dangers with such an approach. Articles were submitted to magazines in the security sector warning of the fact that safes were (and still are) unlike any other products in the industry, at the same time pointing out that it would be impossible to standardise attack criteria.

After all, you can test a filing cabinet to destruction, opening and shutting its drawers thousands of times. You can submit fire-resistant cables to furnace testing. In each case the parameters of that testing may be determined and clearly delineated, but how might you determine the way(s) in which a criminal would attack a safe? At the time, we in the business argued that unless criminals could be persuaded to burgle to a standard, standard attack criteria would be pointless.

Standards come to the fore
There was an even darker threat looming. If standards were set against recommended cash limits, companies would be forced to manufacture down to that standard. Competition would be solely concerned with making safes cheaper, not better. If the standard were to be pan-European, then the gateway to the British market would be thrown open to overseas manufacturers with far cheaper labour rates.

For a while we managed to hold back the tide, but in our hearts we knew that it would be a lost cause. In spite of our protestations, standards were eventually introduced and, in my view, everything that was predicted to happen has happened. Don't take my word for it. Ask any independent safe engineer what they think of today's Euro-rated safes. Ask the guys that install them for you.

Installers love them because they're half the weight of the safes that were being specified 10-15 years ago. All agree that there's simply no comparison between the safes manufactured in the 1980s and the tested and certified products now available on the market. Many of today's offerings simply don't cut it.

Theft: a cyclical phenomenon
Does it matter that current product solutions for end user organisations are not as good as their predecessors? Any underwriter will tell you that they rarely suffer a loss from a safe of any significant quality. The number of attacks on safes is minor compared with a few years ago, while those that do occur seldom demonstrate any level of sophistication.

So why worry? Anyone that has been in the safes business for any length of time at all will have learned one thing. All crime is cyclical. At the moment there are easier pickings to be had by criminals elsewhere. Let's face it, we still have a situation in many parts of the country where members of staff carry cash to the local bank in linen bags. There are thousands of convenience stores, forecourt shops, fast-food take-aways, off licences and video rental chains staying open until all hours, and dealing mostly in cash. Far easier to raid one of these operations than try to crack a safe.

Right now, the criminal doesn't know how easy it could be. They haven't woken up to the fact that most of these new generation safes may be easily attacked using tools cheaply hired by the day. Already we have seen a series of simple but successful drill attacks in the premises of certain retailers. It can only be a matter of time before the pendulum begins to swing the other way. As police authorities achieve success in combating the current epidemic of armed robbery on retail premises, the criminal is bound to look elsewhere.

Eventually they will rediscover the rewards of safe-breaking. When they do, many of today's tested and rated products will clearly be found wanting. Insurers may be tempted to seek compensation from the safe suppliers. There'll be major problems and lengthy inquests by end users and suppliers alike.