If anyone occasionally parks their car outside of the garage be sure to remove the garage door opener. Personal experience of someone I met: one time they parked their van on the street in front of their house and it was broken into. If the thieves had only reached up and pushed a button, they could have helped themselves to a lot more.

Something to go with that...

All garage door openrs come with a preset code. Open up each door opener for cars as well as the main opener in the garage and switch around the little code switches. Its easy to drive down the street and open people's garages if they haven't done this.

Another...
Do not allow your young children out front alone. Child predators are everywhere. It is not enough that you be able to see them from inside through a window. It is not enought just to know where your child is down the street. Make sure they are not alone.

As an obvious fire alarms. But in my bedroom the wall is plaster (built in the twenties) and I have broken the plaster away many a time so i put some wooden board right up next to my bed and it has managed to protect the plaster of my wall.

Never use empty food/water containers to store chemicals. Lots of kids die or are seriously injured from this mistake. We just had in article in our local paper about one such tragedy.

Also, remove the block with 20 knives from your kitchen counter. You need to make it a little harder for a home invader to find a huge knife. One of my wife's co-workers was nearly stabbed to death in her own home, by a home invader who used a knife from the kitchen butcher block.

fire extinguishers on each floor, ditto smoke alarms, co2 detector,
out door lighting, firstaid kit, spare food and water stored...the usual

Thanks for the great responses, I did not want to make the question too specific as I wanted to see if this was a widely adopted approach or a forgotten area of preparedness.

We have the smoke alarms covered, the latest addition is one at the top of the stairs between our room and our child's room with an integrated light that activates with the alarm. Also got a CO detector too.

I have got a fire blanket but no extinguishers, in fact I have just taken a couple of old ones to the recycling centre as they were CTC and Halon, both rather nasty in confined spaces. The lack of new extinguishers is probably down to the UK fire and rescue saying that in the event of a fire you should 'Get Out, Stay Out and Get the Fire Brigade Out' as a lot of people apparently realise too late that they are not putting the fire out and are breathing in a lot of smoke! Having said that in a disaster scenario I guess you cannot depend on the Fire service arriving.

Friendly with good neighbors is an interesting one and not always easily achieved.

LED (appropriate name for this), as you say the auto-on lights seem to have a limited life due to the cheap rechargeables they include. We have got a JML/Johnlite at the foot of the stairs with an integrated night light that is on when the power is on, but the torch no longer has much run time when the power goes out or the fuses trip. I have just checked and it has a pair of AA NiCd, I was considering swapping for NiMH but it marked as replace with use Ni-Cd 600mAh or 700mHa only. It uses a regular torch bulb and I recently spotted an much smaller Energizer LED auto-on torch designed to fix to the wall, which I expect would have much better runtime.

We have only got one motion sensor light, over the porch/front drive. I do not like the motion sensing halogen floods as the blind you when they first come on and create very dark shadows.

I have not come across braided stainless steel burst-resistant water hoses for clothes washers but that sounds worthy of investigation as the previous occupants washing machine leaked so much water that the floor had to be replaced.

Reducing household chemicals and paints etc is next on my list, doubly important with a child in the house. Thankfully our knifes already live in in draw, knife blocks are asking for trouble IMHO. Have just checked by FAK though and most of its contents replacing, my DW has just agreed we should by a more comprehensive one anyway.

We recently replaced our Laundry Iron, the last one fell apart, with one that shuts off it is left face down for 20 or 30 seconds or if it is left upright without moving for 8 minutes, nice safety feature and will probably save us a fortune in power as we have both left in on all day on a number of occasions.

Here's an example on Amazon.com (searched Amazon/UK, but no hits). On this side of the pond, can be found at any plumbing supply house, or big box home improvement, like Home Depot, Lowe's etc. And, naturally, eBay. If you have an icemaker on your refrigerator, don't forget to get one for its water line (that's what burst in my bro-in-law's house ... entire Pergo floor had to be replaced).

Does anyone have an on-line source for small auto-on power failure lights? I used to buy them from Northern Equipment, but they don't list them in their current catalog.

25 products listed under Power Failure Lights here at The Tool Crib. I've bought tools through their catalog for years — always satisfied.