Guide
Manned guarding on an empty site: what you are really buying
Updated
Guarding is the one line on a vacant property budget that scales in a straight line with time. That makes it powerful for short, high-risk periods and ruinous as a default.
The arithmetic nobody shows you
A guard-hour is the unit. Continuous cover is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is 168 guard-hours every week. Night-only cover from 6pm to 6am is 84. Weekend-only cover is 48. Before you ask for a rate, decide the shift pattern, because the pattern multiplies whatever rate you are quoted.
The rate itself has a floor. The National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over from April 2026 (gov.uk). On top of the officer's pay a provider carries employer National Insurance, holiday pay, pension, SIA licensing, uniform, supervision, relief cover and margin. Any quoted charge-out rate must sit meaningfully above the wage floor to be sustainable, and a rate that does not should prompt questions about who is actually standing on your site.
Licensing is not optional
The private security industry in the UK is regulated by the Security Industry Authority under the Private Security Industry Act 2001 (legislation.gov.uk). Ask any provider for the SIA licence details of the officers who will attend your site, and for how they cover sickness and holidays, since that is where unlicensed cover tends to creep in.
When guarding is the right answer
- During strip-out or demolition, when the building cannot be closed up because people and plant are moving through it.
- In the first weeks after a closure, when a site is publicly known to be empty and has not yet been screened.
- Where there is high-value plant or metal on site that cannot be removed.
- Where an unauthorised occupation has already happened and presence is needed while a recovery runs.
- Where a condition or a contract requires attendance, in which case check the exact wording of what is required.
Cheaper patterns that often work as well
- Screen the building, then guard the gap. Guarding only until the screens go in can cut the guarded period from months to days.
- Night-only cover with a monitored tower by day. Detection is cheap during hours when the site is overlooked.
- Mobile patrols instead of static guarding. Several unpredictable visits a night, priced per visit, cost a fraction of a static post; the trade-off is what happens between them.
- Keyholding plus response. Nobody on site, but a contracted attendance time when an alarm activates.
Providers will price several of these patterns side by side if you ask. Our form passes your site details to providers covering your postcode, so ask each of them for a static option and a patrol option and compare the two.