With more than 30 billion combined views now attached to urban exploration hashtags on TikTok, property owners, developers and facilities managers are being urged to reassess site trespassing security ahead of the summer holidays – or risk being caught out by a safeguarding and liability issue that has moved from niche subculture to mainstream legal exposure.
The warning comes from VPS, a European temporary security specialist that protects thousands of vacant and occupied properties across the UK, in a new white paper: Safer Sites, Safer Futures, which sets out the scale of the “urbex” trend and a practical Security Risk Management (SRM) framework for mitigating it.
The white paper cites BBC verification (January 2026) of TikTok accounts showing under-18s entering power plants, slaughterhouses, care facilities and derelict factories in Northwest England.
It also highlights warnings from Cheshire Fire and Rescue that there is “no safe way to investigate an asbestos factory”, given the risk of disturbed fibres becoming permanently trapped in the lungs.
Merseyside Police has also urged parents to address the issue directly after a rise in trespassing incidents in Southport.
VPS notes that younger trespassers are increasingly moving beyond exploration into vandalism and arson – a shift with direct cost implications for site owners through insurance claims, remediation, prosecution risk and reputational damage.
School summer holidays remain a well-documented spike period for trespass on construction sites, vacant properties and derelict buildings, making July and August a critical window for risk assessment.
VPS’s white paper argues the business case is one of cost avoidance: the price of proactive security is consistently lower than the cost of an incident, an insurance claim, a prosecution or the reputational fallout of a child being harmed on an unsecured site.
The white paper’s recommended security risk management (SRM) approach follows four stages – assess, deter, detect, respond – and is illustrated through a case study of Touchwood Shopping Centre, where a community-based deterrence approach reduced risk without relying solely on physical barriers.
Suzy Hardyman, Chief Legal and People Officer, said: “This is no longer a fringe issue for a handful of sites: it’s a mainstream duty-of-care question for anyone holding vacant property.
“Owners who haven’t formally assessed their risk this summer are exposed, both to the immediate safety issue and to the legal and financial consequences that follow.
“Security Risk Management isn’t a cost centre; it’s insurance against a much larger bill.”
The white paper also makes the case that physical security and community action work best together.
Tom Clarke-Forrest of Sport 4 Life UK, a contributor to the research, is already partnering with organisations to deliver free summer sports activities for young people – turning a security risk into a community opportunity.
Facilities managers and property owners are well placed to support initiatives of this kind: if just ten organisations each backed one local holiday sports session, 50 young people would have a safe, structured activity this summer rather than none.
Scale that across a hundred organisations and 5,000 young people benefit.
The business case for doing so – reduced incident risk, stronger community relations, demonstrable CSR – is hard to argue against.
VPS is urging facilities managers, developers and property owners to download Safer Sites, Safer Futures and undertake a site risk assessment before the school holidays begin.
A copy of the white paper Safer Sites, Safer Futures is available, here.
