Three locks before you are home

In a lot of towns, getting home means one key. Here it often means three: the barrier or gate into the urbanisation, the door into the block or the stairwell, and your own front door. They belong to different people, they fail in different ways, and only one of them is yours to fix.

Knowing which is which saves money and a certain amount of embarrassment.

Whose lock is whose

The community gate or barrier. Belongs to the community of owners. Changing it, rekeying it or fitting anything to it is a decision for the community, usually through its administrator. An individual owner who replaces a communal cylinder because it was annoying them has just locked out their neighbours, and will be paying for that twice.

The block or stairwell door. Same answer. It serves everyone in the building, so it belongs to everyone in the building.

Your own front door. Entirely yours. You may change the cylinder whenever you like, as often as you like, without asking anybody.

The dividing line is not really about the door. It is about who the lock serves.

What to check before you call anyone

Three minutes of checking answers most of it.

Is it only you? If a neighbour’s key works in the communal door and yours does not, the problem is your key or your copy, not the lock. If nobody’s key works, it is the lock, and it is the community’s problem.

Does the door close properly? Communal doors here take a hammering: wind off the sea, people carrying shopping, guests propping them open with a wedge in August. A door that no longer closes fully will eventually stop locking at all, and that is a hinge or a closer, not a cylinder.

Is it the same in the evening as in the morning? Aluminium communal doors move in the heat like any other. A door that is fine at nine and sticky at seven is an alignment problem.

Is there an intercom involved? A street door released by an intercom can fail because the electric release has gone, not because anything mechanical is wrong. If the door buzzes and still will not push open, say so: it is a different repair, and sometimes a different trade.

When it is genuinely urgent

A communal door that has failed locked, with residents outside, gets opened. That is not a change to the lock and it does not need a community meeting: it is access to the building. What comes after — whether the cylinder is replaced, who pays, whether everyone needs new keys — does go through the community.

The practical sequence is: get in, tell the administrator, and let them arrange the permanent repair with everybody’s agreement. An owner who tries to do all three at once in the middle of the night usually ends up with a bill nobody agreed to.

The awkward middle case

Occasionally the communal door is fine and the problem is that too many keys to it exist: a long-departed tenant, a cleaner who left, a set that went home with a guest. That is a real security question, and it is a community question too, because everybody’s garage and bin store sit behind that door.

It is also the point where letting and living quietly next to each other get complicated. An owner who lets out a flat may want a key safe by the entrance; the neighbours may have voted against exactly that. It is worth raising at a general meeting rather than improvising at the door, because the version that gets improvised is the one the administrator removes in the middle of the season.

What is always yours

Whatever happens with the shared doors, your own cylinder is yours. If you do not know who holds a key to your flat, change it, and do not wait for a meeting to agree that you may.