Police in Ealing begin to roll out an innovative forensic property marking system to local residents to help reduce burglary.

Safer Neighbourhoods Teams in Ealing will deliver the kits to local residents and will explain and demonstrate the kits whilst answering questions and providing crime prevention advice.

Around 9,000 kits will distributed to residents in burglary hot-spot areas across the borough.

Ealing Superintendent for Neighbourhoods and Operations, Colin Wingrove, said: "MetTrace in partnership with SmartWater® is a fantastic free product that is proven to deter burglars and offer residents a practical way to protect their property. Our officers will be personally visiting all of these homes to help sign people up and offer advice."

"This builds on the excellent work with Ealing Council to reduce burglary, and we are pleased they are supporting this new initiative."

"Our aim is to create a hostile environment for burglars as we work hard to catch and convict offenders, as well as prevent crime before it happens. MetTrace will help make Ealing a safe and secure borough for residents, businesses and visitors."

The new ‘MetTrace’ programme, in partnership with SmartWater®, will see 440,000 London homes in burglary hot spots receive a free kit to protect their property.

The kits contain an invisible property marking solution, allowing owners to mark their possessions with a unique forensic code and to display warning stickers to deter burglars. This code can then be used by the police to trace the items should they ever be stolen and to link suspects to crime scenes.

Created by SmartWater®, the solution, which is virtually impossible to remove and can only be viewed under UV light, has already been proven to significantly reduce burglary rates.

During a recent Met trial across five boroughs, burglary rates reduced on average by 49 per cent, with some areas seeing a reduction of more than 70 per cent. More than half of residents involved in the pilot said they felt safer after they applied the liquid to items in their homes.

All 32 Met boroughs will begin to receive kits over the next eight months.

In total 440,000 kits will be distributed over the next three years.

Safer Neighbourhoods Teams will deliver, explain and demonstrate the kits to residents and be on hand to answer questions and provide crime prevention advice.