Locked out in
Beeston?

The terraces off the High Road mostly still have timber front doors. Beeston town centre and the streets around it are largely Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, and a timber door takes a mortice lock rather than the euro cylinder you get on a modern one. That matters if your insurer has asked for BS3621 — it is a timber-door standard, and on this kind of door it is the right thing to fit.

The newer estates and the rear doors are a different job. Where a back door or a whole front door has been replaced with uPVC or composite — which is most of them by now — the lock is a euro cylinder through a multipoint mechanism. Those fail in two ways: the cylinder can be snapped, which is what a TS007 3-star cylinder is for, or the gearbox goes and the handle stops lifting. The gearbox is the cheaper of the two to put right and it does not need a new door.

Shared houses and student lets. A lot of Beeston's terraces are let to students and to staff at the university and the Queen's Medical Centre, so locks get changed between tenancies more often here than in most of the areas I cover. If you are a landlord wanting a lock changed and keys handed over on a changeover day, say so on the phone and I will work to that.

Whatever the door is, you get the price before I start. If the honest answer is that the lock is fine and the door just needs adjusting, that is what you will be told — the published prices are the same in Beeston as everywhere else I go.