There’s a couple of questions you should consider if you lose your keys:

 Q1.  Does it affect your household contents insurance policy?

 Q2.  Could your family home and contents be at risk?

A1. In all cases, you should check with your insurers to find out how you stand. In our experience, it makes a difference to them how the keys were lost or stolen. Some of the situations we come across are: the keys were left in the door and stolen from the door; a handbag or bag was stolen with keys in it, with or without information about where you live; or the general loss of keys and you’re not sure where.

A2. The answer to this is honestly…possibly. But are you willing to take the risk with the safety of your family home and contents?

The solutions

The best and easiest solution is to call a reliable, recommended, trusted, trained, and insured locksmith who will carry all the right locks, in the right sizes, the right finishes and colours to suit your needs. They will be able to come to your property, usually within an hour of your call if not before. Make sure you do your due diligence before calling one, check reviews, and ask them the questions above.

The cheapest option is to go to your local shop and try to find a lock that you think might fit, in the finish/colour you want, find your tools (hopefully you’ve got the right ones and haven’t lost any!). Then use the skills you may or might not have, all to save a couple of pounds. What if you mess it up or can’t do it? What will the wife/partner/friend say???

There’s only one real solution. Even though everyone is good at something, you need to know your boundaries. So what will happen next?

After you’ve called a decent locksmith with all the right credentials—as explained above—what is the process?

You should be thinking about changing your lock(s) or fitting an additional lock to your door. If you don’t do this, there’s a chance that the people who find the keys might come to your property, try the keys and see if you’re in, or maybe they will wait until you’re out.

This might be a chance, when the locksmith does come out, to possibly upgrade your locks. Speak to him. They should be able to give you some advice on that. A lot of the locks on people’s doors have been on there for a while, so obviously over time locks become better and are upgraded to meet higher standards. This might be a great opportunity to get your locks upgraded. Obviously, over the years, security on people’s doors has been and needed to be upgraded, with burglars knowing how to get into the less secure ones.

We always advise getting an auto-deadlocking night latch, with at least one British standard deadlock on the door, to conform to contents insurance standards. Then, if you wanted to go one step further, we always advise a London Bar, which is a strip of metal that fits down the frame side and makes the frame a lot more secure. We advise it, and the Met Police advise it.

British Standard Night latch (available in different colours)

London Bar

London Bar, Lock Guards, Birmingham Bar

Also, lock guards are a good security device that we tend to fit. They fit round a mortice deadlock and help strengthen the door and lock. They are decorative metal plates that are screwed through from one side of the door to the other. They come in various finishes/colours: Brass, Chrome, White, and Nickel plated.

Lock Guards (other sizes and colours are available)

Hinge bolts secure the hinge side from attack. One part is a cylindrical piece of metal and is fitted in the door and locks in to a keep part on the frame side.

Hinge Bolts (come in various designs and colours)

A Birmingham Bar goes on the hinge side. This is also a strip of metal like a London Bar but it protects the hinge side. It is straight piece of metal and screws into various places. These also come in various finishes/colours.

Birmingham Bar

All of these things will make your door a lot more secure, and make it a lot harder for a burglar to break in through the door.

If you want to find out more information about securing your properties, follow the link to the Met Police’s website where you can read a full breakdown of what they advise. We obviously follow what they advise and would suggest you do to.

The other thing you should consider is what your insurers say that you need for compliance with the  contents insurance on your property.

Another thing to consider is, if it ever came to light that you didn’t change your locks and there was a spare key or a lost set of keys out there, they could possibly invalidate any future claim. So you should speak to them and see exactly what they would advise.

In some circumstances, your insurer, household, or car could cover the cost of replacing your locks. They’ll usually say just forward us the bill, or they’ve got an engineer that does it for you. But definitely speak to them, see what they say and see what your policy says.

Most of all, you want to keep your family and your property secure. Obviously, if you need any more help and advice, we’re here. We can help. Just give us a call. We can help and advise you any step of the way.

Thank you.

To start out, I must say that what I say in this blog post is what we have experienced in the years we have been working as locksmiths and looking at and asking our customers what their insurance policies require.

You must check with your insurer, as some policies may vary.

Types of Locks Required on External Wooden Single Doors

What we have found is that most of the insurance policies that we see all stipulate the same thing: For any exterior wooden doors, you need to have a British Standard lock conforming to BS3621 or a standard 5 Lever or a Multipoint Locking System. Check with your insurers or your insurance policy to see what they require.

Most standard wooden doors have a Chubb type lock and or a Yale type lock.

You can get Mortice Deadlocks (Chubb locks that just have a bolt), or Mortice Sash locks (in which the sash lock operates with handles and has a latch) conforming to BS3621.

Mortice Sash Lock

Mortice Deadlock

You can also get BS night latches (Yale type locks) conforming to BS3621. They are like your standard Yale-type locks but are a high security Yale-type lock that conform to BS3621.

BS Nightlatch

Both of these types can be fitted on most wooden doors.

We will come to Multi-Point Locking Systems later on in this article.

Wooden French Double Doors/Windows

If you’ve got wooden French double doors, the insurers usually stipulate that you need a 5-Lever/ British Standard 5 Lever rebated lock on there, and they would also need key operated bolts fitted top and bottom on at least the fix leaf door (the second opening door). Some insurers say you need them fitted on the second leaf as well as the fix leaf – in other words, on both doors locking into the top and bottom of the frame. You can get a couple of varieties of these types of key operated bolt locks, and you can have surface mounted ones made by various manufactures including Yale, ERA.

 Multi-Purpose Bolt

You can also get internally fitted ones where you just see an oval escutcheon with a circular hole where it operates on a star/grooved key. These are also made by different manufacturers, including Yale, ERA.

 Mortice Rack Bolt

You can get wooden French doors/windows with Multi-Point Locking Systems on them that conform to standards. Please see the section on Multi-Point Locking Systems.

Wooden Stable Doors

If you have a stable doors (a door that splits in the middle and has a top half and bottom half), your insurers usually class these as two doors so they would require a British Standard lock conforming to BS3621 on both halves — not just the top half and not just the bottom half. You need it on both halves.

You can also get Multi-Point Locking Systems on these doors. Please refer to the section below.

Multi-Point Locking Systems on Wooden Doors

Quite a lot of wooden doors now are coming with what is classed as Multi-Point Locking Systems.

To tell if you have one of these doors: In order to lock it, you would either have to lift the handle up, or turn the key round within the handle two or three times. The other way to tell is to look at the edge of the door where the latch and the bolts come out and see if there is a strip of metal, usually 16mm or 22mm thick,running up the length of the door. As the name describes, a multi-point locking system means that itlocks in multiple places on the frame. To comply with your house content insurance policy, your insurers usually stipulate that it has to lock in five or more places. These locks do not conform to BS3621 but are insurance approved.

A thin door under 44mm thick?

If you’ve got a door that’s under 44mm thick, usually around 35mm thick, these doors are usually used for internal doors. Your household content insurers would usually require what are called Bradley Rose boxes fitted to the door, and then in the box a Union 3g114e. Some insurers do not insure you if yours is not 44mm thick, and we have heard of them saying the door has to be changed to comply.

How to check to see if your locks conform:

To check if you have any of these locks on your doors at the moment, what you should do is open the door and look where the bolt or latch comes out. There should be a strip of metal: brass, silver, or chrome colored, possibly painted over. This strip should have a BS Kite mark, or a full length strip with various locking points in it (multipoint locking system). A British Standard Kite mark is like a heart shaped kite mark. See the picture below.

If you’ve got one of those stamped on it, you’re covered for most insurance policies.

If you need any help, feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to help you and talk you through it. Thank you.