Thursday last week we were graced with the presence of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. A whole task force unexpectedly appeared on our doorstep. The men and women were accompanied by friendly but clearly trained sniffer dogs. HMRC were on the lookout for illegal cigarettes amongst many other banned substances which according to their research have been increasingly been stored in self-storage facilities across the country.

At Premier Self Storage we make it very clear to our clients that there are some items we will not allow within our buildings, we have an extensive list which more or less contains anything you wouldn’t show to a policeman and more besides.

Thursday morning came and here we were making tea for her majesty’s finest.
They requested access to every floor within our buildings, we duly obliged and their teams rapidly progressed through each corridor in search of anything of suspicion brought to their anything by their well-trained dogs.

In the meantime, other Customs officials asked our staff about our client records and details we hold on file. We re-assured the officers that we obtained maximum information including photographic ID and current address. This data is securely encrypted and only accessible to specifically authorised members of our team. The customs team were truly impressed. They said our system was one of the best they had seen in the entire country. They alluded to other companies storing data insecurely, keys to rooms hanging in clear view and accessible to anyone who happened to gaze in the right direction.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs complimented the cleanliness of our buildings and the orderly way in which we go about our business as well as our obvious security measures. Our systems log each and every time a client (or even our staff) enters or exists our buildings, how long they were in the building for and how frequently they access the building.

For example, at any moment we know that Joe Bloggs entered his unit at 3:15 pm and spent 45 minutes here. Moreover, our 24hr CCTV cameras will show us his exact movements within the building. At Premier Self Storage the security of our clients’ goods is of paramount importance to us.

After a few hours of thorough sniffing by the dogs, the customs staff were satisfied with their investigations and left the premises as promptly as they appeared. They did not report a single infraction or illegal substance after searching over 30,000 square feet of the storage facility.
Business as usual then.