What happens to your stock if you have to lock down your business?

How will the current ‘stay at home’ measures affect your business. If you are running a business from a standalone premises and have been forced to close due to the movement restrictions we are all being urged to follow, you may be looking for offsite storage to keep your stock safe. What are the implications of using self-storage at this time and is this a sensible route to take?

We think that there are likely to be a number of businesses which would benefit from using self-storage at the moment - whether you are looking to store stock or even equipment in a more secure location. Some things to look out for if you are trying to organise storage in a hurry.

• Make sure you have a clear idea of the value of what you are storing and that you take out adequate insurance to cover it on a full replacement basis.
• Make sure that you are not storing anything which contravenes the rules of the storage location. Our blog post ‘Things you should never store in a storage unit’ will give you a good low-down on what is not allowed. Briefly however, anything flammable, animals, plants and food stuffs and anything pressurised or hazardous materials are always going to be on the banned list.
• Make sure that you take some time to think about the kind of storage you are using in terms of accessibility. It may be that you will not be able to continue access storage if it is internal. Movement restrictions may make it easier to access external storage in future.
• When looking at insurance for your storage unit, think carefully before you take out any cover offered by the storage facility. We have highlighted on our blog a number of times the difference in cost between storage facilities and specialist insurance. You also need to make sure that the level of covered offered is sufficient, especially where this is ‘included’ in the storage cost. There have been many cases documented here on our blog where people have been chronically under-insured – only realising that when it came to making a claim.

If you are new to using self-storage – you may find some other useful information on our blog. See below for our suggested further reading.

Things to consider when insuring a storage unit
How much storage space do I need
Important considerations when storing business documents