When you’re buying security fencing, it’s important to understand the specification of the fencing you’re looking at, and what your security requirements are. That’s why the Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) – the leading international certification agency responsible for rating security and fire protection services and products – has created its Loss Prevention Standard (LPS).
Products specified to meet LPS specifications will deliver a specific level of protection from attempts at manual forced entry. The LPS 1175 issue 8 security ratings system classifies the performance of security fencing in accordance with their performance in a range of tests.
In the past, products have been rated from SR1 (the lowest level of protection) to SR8 (the highest). However, with the latest issue of LPS, the system has been reworked entirely to give a more comprehensive overview of a security fence’s performance.
There is now a ‘threat level’ that is denoted by the letters A to H. This corresponds to the equipment used by the potential intruders and the number of people involved in the intrusion. The higher the letter, the more sophisticated the equipment and the more hypothetical attackers there are involved.
The second aspect of the ratings system is the delay. This is a number (1, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20) that corresponds to the minimum delay in minutes you can expect from a locked security fence installation.
So what does this mean for buyers of security fencing?
Essentially, Issue 8.0 of the LPS security ratings system, gives someone looking to choose security fencing a much more detailed idea of a product’s capabilities, allowing them to make a more educated and focused product choice.
With the ability to look at threat level and delay times independently, rather than in specific combinations, specifiers of security fencing products can now choose from a range of almost 50 different combinations of delay time and threat level. This means you can more easily choose the right level of protection for a given situation.
For example, if you think criminals are less likely to spend lots of time attempting to get through a fence – or if a security response can be dispatched quickly – you may not need a particularly long delay time, even if you want protection from a significant threat level.
As a buyer or specifier of security fencing, you can now use the latest issue of security ratings to help calculate specific delay times against an attempted entry by layering multiple products designed to protect against a specific category of tools.
Issue 8.0 of the LPS also takes into account increasingly sophisticated levels of equipment and knowledge on the part of criminals seeking to breach security fencing.
The table below shows the Security Ratings and explains the resistance levels of ratings 1 to 4
| Height | SR1 | SR2 | SR3 | SR4 |
| Threat Type | An opportunist attack by physical force and stealth |
A more determined opportunist attack |
Deliberate forced entry of protected premises |
Experienced attempt at forced entry with higher level tools |
| Tool Category | A | B | C | D |
| Tools | • Cable cutter • Pliers • Screwdriver • Spanners • Knife • Bolt cutter • Claw hammer • Hand drill • Pipe wrench |
Cat. A tools PLUS • Axe • Crowbar • Gas torch • Hacksaw |
Cat. A, B tools PLUS • Disc grinder • Fire axe • Jigsaw • Sledgehammer |
Cat. A, B, C tools PLUS • Circular saw • Reciprocating saw |
| Maximum Working Time (mins) |
1 | 3 | 5 | 10 |
| Maximum Test Duration (mins) |
10 | 15 | 20 | 30 |
| Zaun Solutions | Duo8 SR1DualGuard SR1 | HiSec Super SR2 | CorruSec SR3 | CorruSec SR4 |
Find Zaun’s listing in the Red Book Live
