New Home Security First Day | What to Do in Order

The removal van is still on the drive. You've got the keys from the estate agent, a lukewarm coffee, and approximately forty things competing for your attention. Security feels like something you'll sort next weekend.

Don't. That first hour matters more than any other. You don't know how many copies of those keys exist. The previous owner might have been a landlord running half a dozen tenants through since the locks were last changed. A neighbour might have a spare. The cleaner might. Nobody's being malicious, but nobody knows either.

What follows is the order I'd work through on my own house. Practical, cheap where it can be, and specific about where not to cut corners.

Start with a key audit before you change anything

Count what you've been handed. Front door keys, back door keys, garage keys, padlock keys, window keys, the little ones for the internal patio door. Write them down. Ask the seller or agent if there are any more.

Nobody will ever give you a complete honest answer, because they genuinely don't know. A set went to a relative who helped out during an illness three years ago. The spare is still under a pot outside. They mean to tell you, they forget, it doesn't matter to them any more.

That's fine. The audit isn't about trust. It's about knowing what's actually in play before you start changing things, so you don't order the wrong number of cylinders or miss a lock entirely.

The front door: change the cylinder first, not the whole lock

Most front doors in Southborough and across the TN4 postcode have a euro cylinder, the oval barrel you can see in the middle of the lock body. You don't need to replace the whole door furniture. Just the cylinder.

Before you buy anything, check the cylinder size. Measure from the centre of the fixing screw to each end of the cylinder. Write it down as two numbers, for example 35/45mm. Take a photo too. Getting this wrong is expensive and irritating.

What to fit:

• A TS007 3-star rated cylinder as a minimum. Avocet ABS, Ultion, Mul-T-Lock MT5+, ERA Invincible. All of these are anti-snap, anti-pick, and anti-bump to the standard that satisfies most home insurers.
• If your door already has a TS007 3-star cylinder, check the condition. Is the cam (the small metal tongue inside) worn? Does it turn smoothly? A good cylinder that's been in place for eight years may still be worth replacing simply because you don't know the key history.
• Don't fit a cheap Yale-branded euro cylinder from a DIY shed. Yale make excellent deadlocks but their budget euro cylinders are not the same thing. Check the rating on the box.

If your front door is a traditional timber door with a British Standard five-lever mortice lock, you're not replacing a cylinder. You're rekeying or replacing the lock body. A BS3621 or BS8621 five-lever mortice lock can be rekeyed by a locksmith without replacing the whole mechanism, which is often cheaper than you'd expect. Ring me before you buy a new lock.

One thing people consistently miss: the door might have a second lock, a nightlatch above the main lock, or a mortice bolt. Both need addressing. A Chubb 8K114 nightlatch can be rekeyed. A mortice bolt is usually keyed from outside, sometimes with a completely different key, and it gets forgotten.

The back door: people treat it as an afterthought and burglars know it

Back doors are the most common entry point in residential break-ins across Kent. They're less visible from the street, which means less risk for the intruder. And they're frequently fitted with inferior locks, because previous owners fitted what was cheap and available.

Check three things:

The door type. If it's uPVC with a multipoint locking system, you've got a euro cylinder in there too. Change it to a TS007 3-star just as you did at the front. The lock body itself, the hooks, rollers, and deadbolt, is operated by the handle and shouldn't need replacing unless it's obviously worn or damaged.

The hinges. External door hinges should not be on the outside. If they are, you need hinge bolts fitted. These are simple steel bolts that engage into the frame when the door's closed and prevent the door being lifted off even if someone removes the hinge pins. A locksmith fits a pair in about 20 minutes.

The frame. Push the door from outside, at the lock side. If it flexes, the frame is weak. No lock holds a door that a motivated person can flex open. A steel door reinforcement plate or security striker box fixes this. Worth doing before you fit the new cylinder, not after.

Sliding patio doors and French doors

Sliding doors often have a basic hook lock and nothing else. Many have a small euro cylinder or a thumbturn. What they almost always lack is an additional security measure at the top and bottom of the door.

Fit a door bar or a track lock at the base. A length of cut-down steel bar in the track is old-fashioned and it works. A proper track lock from the likes of Fuhr or Maco is neater and more reliable.

French doors have their own problem: the astragal bar, the vertical bar in the middle. On a cheap installation it's not properly secured into the frame at the top and bottom. Push the two leaves together from outside. If there's any give, the astragal needs a shoot bolt fitted top and bottom to anchor it properly. This is a twenty-pound part and an hour's work.

Window locks: the ones worth checking versus the ones to ignore

Not every window needs upgrading on day one. Work through them by risk.

Ground floor windows and those accessible from a flat roof, a bay roof, or a side extension. These are your priority. Every one should have a key-lockable handle or a separate window lock in addition to the standard handle. If they have uPVC handles, check whether those handles have a key. If not, they can be replaced with a Mila, Maco, or Winkhaus locking handle for around £15 to £25 per window. Do it yourself or have a locksmith do a batch.

Wooden sash windows. These are common in older Southborough properties. The standard sash fastener is decorative at best. Fit sash window stops, small bolts that screw through the inner sash into the outer, or fit a pair of dual screw locks. These cost a few pounds each and prevent the window being slid up even if the latch is forced.

First floor windows not accessible from below. Low priority. Don't spend money here on day one.

Keep the window keys together and tell everyone in the house where they are. The security benefit of window locks disappears if you can't find the key in an emergency.

The garage: the weak point nobody walks around

When I visit new homeowners across Pembury, Bidborough, and Hildenborough for a day-one security check, the garage is almost always the thing they haven't thought about. Half the time, the door between the garage and the house has a basic nightlatch or nothing at all, because the previous owner assumed the garage door itself was security.

The garage door itself is often not. Up-and-over doors have basic locks. Roller doors vary. Side-hinged garage doors are the most consistently underrated weak point on a domestic property.

Check three things:

1. The garage door lock. Is it a proper lock or a basic lever? For a sectional or roller door with remote access, is the manual override secured? A competent intruder can access the manual release on many cheaper garage doors through the rubber seal at the top of the door.
2. The internal door from the garage into the house. Treat this exactly like a front door. It needs a five-lever mortice lock to BS3621, or a good euro cylinder in a multipoint lock, not a flimsy nightlatch. If you wouldn't put that lock on your front door, don't put it here.
3. Whether the garage door opens at all during the first 48 hours. If it uses a remote and you don't know if previous owners have remotes you haven't been given, change the remote code or have the receiver unit reset before you rely on it.

The side gate: often the last thing people check and the easiest way in

Side gates on Southborough semis, and across the TN4 estates from High Brooms to Southborough Common, are frequently held shut with a simple bolt or a padlock that came with the house. You don't know the key history of that padlock any more than you know the front door key history.

Replace the padlock if there is one. A Sold Secure Gold-rated closed shackle padlock, from Mul-T-Lock or a comparable brand, costs £40 to £70 and takes five minutes to fit. It's one of the best-value security upgrades on any property.

If the gate has a bolt on the inside, make sure it can't be reached over or through the gate. A six-foot gate with a bolt you can reach over the top by stretching is not a locked gate.

If the gate is wooden and has a letterbox-style gap at the bottom, that's a problem too. A rod through the gap can lift an inside bolt. Either fit a padlock on the outside or position the bolt high enough that it can't be reached.

Key storage: don't put them somewhere obvious

The hook next to the front door. The bowl on the hall table. Both visible through the letterbox with a torch. A surprising number of burglaries involve fishing keys through letterboxes rather than forcing entry. Fit a letterbox cage or draught excluder that prevents anything being pushed through and retrieved, and keep keys out of sight from the hallway.

If you're fitting a key safe for a cleaner or regular tradesperson, read my separate piece on key safe security before you buy one. Not all key safes are equal and the cheaper ones have real weaknesses.

Alarm codes and smart devices from the previous owner

If the house has an alarm, change the installer code and the user code on day one. The alarm company (if there is a contract) can help. If you don't have the installer code, a locksmith or alarm engineer can reset most panels. Don't leave the previous owner's code in place. You genuinely don't know who else knows it.

Same applies to any smart devices tied to the property: video doorbells, smart locks, access control panels. Factory reset them before you set them up under your own accounts. A Ring or Nest device that's still linked to a previous owner's account gives them a live view of your front door.

What to spend on day one versus what can wait

Budgets are real. Here's an honest priority order:

Spend today: - Front door cylinder change (£60 to £120 fitted, depending on spec) - Back door cylinder change if it's euro (£60 to £120 fitted) - Side gate padlock (£40 to £70, fit it yourself) - Letterbox cage if keys are visible from outside (£15 to £30)

Spend this week: - Any accessible window locks - Hinge bolts on the back door if hinges are exposed - Internal garage door upgrade

Plan for next month: - Alarm system assessment - Security lighting for rear of property - French door or patio door shoot bolts

You won't spend a fortune doing day one right. Front and back door cylinders plus a padlock is often under £300 fitted, and that covers the entry points that matter most.

One thing people always forget

The keys you've just changed out. The old cylinders. The old padlock.

Dispose of them, don't leave them in a drawer. An old key that fits a lock you've since changed is harmless. But an old cylinder sitting in a skip or a rubbish bag, with the key, gives someone all the information they need about what you've just fitted and what street you're on.

Cut old keys before you bin them. Take old cylinders to a recycling centre rather than the kerbside bin.

If you're moving to a house in Southborough, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Speldhurst, Langton Green, or anywhere across the TN postcodes and you want a locksmith to run through day-one changes with you, Locks Local covers the area and I can usually get to you within 30 minutes. Pricing is straight on the phone. No pressure to do everything at once, just an honest assessment of what matters.