LANCASHIRE LOCKSMITH • HOMES & BUSINESSES
For landlords the recurring job is the cylinder change between tenancies, from £120 per door, because an outgoing tenant’s keys can never be accounted for. HMO and flat doors have their own requirement: escape must not need a key, which rules out some locks that are otherwise fine.
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Changeovers, HMOs, student lets and holiday lets across Lancashire. Planned work booked at daytime rates costs a fraction of the same job as an emergency, and most of it is predictable months in advance.
When a tenancy ends, the keys that come back are the keys the tenant chose to return. Copies are cheap, tenancies are long, and in a shared house the number in circulation is genuinely unknowable. Changing the cylinder — from £120 per door — keeps the existing handles and mechanism and issues a clean set. It is the single most useful thing a landlord can do between tenants, and it answers the question an incoming tenant is entitled to ask.
A door that people sleep behind has to open from inside without a key. That is why flat and HMO doors generally take a lock to BS8621 rather than BS3621: key from outside, handle or thumbturn from inside. A deadlock requiring a key to get out, fitted to a bedroom or flat door in a shared house, is a fire-safety problem rather than extra security, and it is one of the more common things we find. Where a licence or a fire risk assessment has specified something, tell us the wording.
Across a portfolio the administration costs more than the locks. Cylinders supplied keyed alike mean one key per property covering front, rear and communal doors. Where one person manages several properties, a small master scheme can mean one management key rather than a drawer full. Both are planned work and both reduce the number of emergency call-outs caused by nobody being able to find the right key.
A failed multipoint mechanism costs from £216 and almost always fails when the door is locked, from outside, out of hours. The same door adjusted before it gets there costs from £76, and a full service from £108. Several doors in one visit is cheaper per door than separate call-outs. For a portfolio, servicing between tenancies — when the property is empty anyway — is the obvious moment.
On the doors in normal use, yes. The keys returned at the end of a tenancy are the ones the tenant chose to return, and copies cannot be traced. A cylinder change is inexpensive, keeps the existing hardware and lets you tell an incoming tenant honestly that the locks are new.
Escape must not require a key, which generally means a lock to BS8621 — key from outside, handle or thumbturn inside — rather than BS3621. Where a licence or fire risk assessment specifies something particular, tell us the exact wording and we will work to it.
Yes, and it is more economical, because attendance is charged once rather than per property where they are close together. Changeovers, servicing and keyed-alike sets are all worth batching.
That is between you and the tenant under their agreement, and we have no view on it. What matters practically is whether the keys could be linked to the address; if they could, treat it as a lock change rather than a replacement key.
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