DORSET Police's Rural Crime Team has warned residents that police forces across the UK are seeing an increase in the theft of satellite guidance systems from machinery.

The team said that it has not seen a rise in Dorset, but offered the following advice to prevent your machinery being targeted.

• Remove all GPS guidance receivers, aerials or antenna globe when not in use and keep them locked away.

• Considered fitting security tethers to devices to stop them being removed.

• Consider marking these with UV pen or engraving your postcode or forensic marking such as Datatag are all options to consider. Machines fitted and registered with certain security markings are four times less likely to be stolen and our 6 times more likely to be recovered if they are stolen.

• Store machinery inside locked barns if possible.

• Where locking machines away isn’t an option consider fitting mains or battery operated alarms to outbuildings or around the perimeter of areas where machines are stored.

• If you are considering fitting CCTV then please consider fitting this as well as alarms as part of a system. CCTV cannot be relied on fully as this won’t alert you at the time that you have intruders.

• Do you receive alerts from Dorset Police via email for farm, horse or rural watch? If you don’t and would like to sign up please visit www.dorsetalert.co.uk

• CCTV and intruder alarms will deter most thieves but make sure they are checked regularly to ensure they will work when you need them and they are placed in a position that won’t be triggered by animals or foliage moving in the wind.

• Why not take photographs of your items? This will help police should they be stolen with press releases and social media appeals furthering the chances of the items being recovered.

• Let employees know the security arrangements that are expected of them while working on the farm.

• Encourage farm staff to be vigilant and report any suspicious behaviour or vehicles to the police. We don't know unless you tell us.

If you would like a visit to your farm, smallholding or other rural business from the Rural Crime Team or for further crime prevention advice please send an email to the team at ruralcrimeteam@dorset.pnn.police.uk