Locksmith in Hendon

The Hendon mix: terraces, semis, blocks and conversions

Hendon does not have one typical front door. Church End and The Burroughs keep streets of Victorian and Edwardian terraces, many of them still on their original timber doors with a mortice lock and a nightlatch. The interwar bay-fronted semis that spread out from there mostly went over to uPVC or composite doors during the double-glazing decades, so they lock on a euro cylinder and a multipoint strip. Then there are the flats: purpose-built mansion blocks, big houses carved into conversions, and newer blocks, all with a communal entrance in front of the individual flat door, and a large share of them privately rented, especially in the streets near Middlesex University. Each of those door types has its own way of failing, and together they set the pattern for what Kenny is called to in NW4:

• Lockouts and lost keys, which in a block often means opening two doors rather than one.
• Cylinder and lock changes at the end of a tenancy, busiest when the academic year turns over.
• Dropped or stiff uPVC doors on the interwar semis where the multipoint gearbox has worn out.
• Plain euro cylinders swapped for anti-snap 3-star units, on flats as much as houses.
• Communal door-entry and access faults in the mansion blocks and conversions: failed entry-phones, jammed shared locks, lost fobs.

Lock changes when a tenancy ends, done properly

A landlord in Hendon rarely knows how many copies of a key were cut during a tenancy, and a handed-back bunch proves nothing. The clean answer at changeover is to make every old key useless in one go. On a uPVC or composite door that means a new euro cylinder, from £65, or a rekey of the existing one from £45; on a timber door with a five-lever mortice it means a fresh lock or a set of new levers. New keys for the incoming tenant are cut on the spot, and the number of keys handed over can go on the invoice so there is a record. In a converted house with several flats, Kenny can do every door in one visit and, where the freeholder wants it, keep all the flats on a shared communal key while each flat door stays unique. The landlord side of the work, including what a tenancy agreement usually expects, is set out in our landlord lock change guide, and anyone buying rather than letting will find the same logic in moving house: change the locks. The key cutting service is mobile, so the keys are cut at the door rather than posted on later.

Entry-phones, fobs and communal doors

When the communal door on a Hendon block fails, it is not one household that is affected but all of them. The usual faults are an electric release that has stopped dropping the latch, a mechanical lock that has jammed with a key inside, a closer that no longer pulls the door shut so it never locks, or a fob that has gone missing and left a resident stranded. The shared door can be opened without damage in the same way as any other, and the lock, keep or release repaired or replaced, but a change to a communal entrance normally needs the freeholder or managing agent to sign it off first, so it helps to have their number ready when you call. Individual flat doors behind the entrance are treated as ordinary residential lock work, with the fire-door rules of a block kept in mind: a flat door onto a common corridor needs a lock that opens from inside without a key.

Shut out of a flat or house in NW4

Locked out in NW4 with a phone but no key, the first thing to do is ring 07904 594452 and say the word lockout, because that moves the call up the list. Kenny opens roughly 95 per cent of doors with no damage at all, using picks and bypass tools on cylinders, nightlatches and lever locks before any thought of a drill. The older timber flat doors in the conversions and mansion blocks respond well to this, and their keeps and furniture are left as they were. The few locks that have to be drilled are high-security cylinders designed to resist picking, and those are replaced on the spot with keys cut there and then. You are told the price before he leaves Ickenham: from £85 in daytime and from £110 in the evening or overnight, with no extra for the call-out. The emergency lockout service page explains the sequence in detail, and the guide on being locked out of your house lists what not to do while you wait.

Which lock will your policy accept on a Hendon door

Insurers write their lock conditions by door type, so the question is which door you have. A timber door in the terraces around Church End and The Burroughs needs a five-lever mortice deadlock to BS3621, from £120 fitted, which is the kitemarked British Standard nearly every policy names. A uPVC or composite door, whether on an interwar semi or a newer flat, needs its euro cylinder replaced with a TS007 3-star unit, from £95, so that a snapping attack, the one those doors are exposed to, no longer works. Anti-snap lock fitting in Hendon is a short job because the cylinder is a straight swap once it has been measured correctly. Kenny fits by door and by the wording of your policy rather than by habit, and the guides on BS3621 and home insurance and anti-snap locks explain what the standards test for.

Around Hendon: Edgware, Hampstead and Stanmore

Open-in Security Services works out of 87A Long Lane, Ickenham, where it has been since 2006, and covers Hendon, Church End, West Hendon, Hendon Central and Brent Street as part of its regular ground, with Edgware, Hampstead and Stanmore next door. A 24 hour locksmith near Hendon Central, a uPVC door repair in Hendon, or an emergency locksmith in Hendon for a lost key at midnight all come from the same one-man firm and the same phone number, 07904 594452, and every job is priced before it starts. The pricing page has the from prices, and the guide to locksmith costs in West London explains what pushes a price up or down. If you are comparing firms, the guide on finding a genuine local locksmith tells you which questions to ask.