Eurovision

Our front door is always locked, but not the back, as I`m in and out all the time, and there`s always someone in here.

There are police cuts. Police are not showing up quickly necessarily anymore, about this type of thing. And as numberplease says too, it is sometimes a man that enters drunk and confused.

Ever since a stranger walked into a former house, uninvited, I've ensured my front door and back gate are locked.

Lucky girl to arrive at your house jen. Some friends found a man asleep on their sofa in the morning, assumed he was a friend of their daughter's, who was asleep upstairs. They made him breakfast and chatted happily. He seemed a nice guy, like all their daughter's pals. She wandered down late morning and asked to be introduced to their new friend……. It seems he'd been under the influence, wandered in and fallen asleep on the sofa. He was a bit bog eyed in the morning and went along with their assumption that he'd come home with their daughter. He was evidently very apologetic when it became clear he'd never me the daughter before. They live in a very "nice" area in south Manchester and he lived nearby.

You should always lock the back door too, number. There's a well-known ruse in which criminals work in pairs. One comes to the front door to keep you talking while the other nips in the back door and swipes your handbag and any other valuables. I only wish I always heeded my own advice.

If you leave a door unlocked and are burgled while, say, you're engrossed in the Eurovision Song Contest, your insurer will not be impressed.

So unimpressed in fact they may refuse to pay out.

I do not think my insurance says I have to keep the door locked when I am in the house, just when I go out.
I live in a bungalow, and can see anybody walking past the window when I am watching the TV, so that's not a problem, either.
We did actually see her walking past the window. She wasn't in any state to burgle, so we discovered.

Numberplease, I do remember you telling us the other year about the man who wandered into your kitchen.our doors are not actually locked when we are at home, but nobody could open the door from the outside, it's that kind of lock.
DJen, that sounds like the sort of lock that you need on your door, unlocked from the inside but locked from the outside.

It's rather depressing to feel we have to lock our doors during the day. I always lock up about 5 and keep the front door locked if I'm in the back garden. The dogs are a deterrent, not that they'd be aggressive but they do bark loudly and persistently if someone comes up the front path.

Surely most front doors are only openable from the inside without a key?

No.

Oh.

I agree with you, Ana. I cannot recall knowing anyone whose front door did not have a "Yale" type lock that could only be opened from the outside with a key, certainly for the past fifty years.

And not just in big towns and cities.

One of the questions on house insurance quotes asks what kind of lock you have on external doors.

I have a seven-lever Yale type lock, but it is connected to the door handle. If I lock the door on the outside, it locks on the inside, and vice versa. If I want to allow people to get in, it has to be unlocked. The door handle works from the outside and inside.
I agree with you, roses, that that sort of lock might be ideal for my door. It is the sort that fits on wooden doors, and we used to have on the guest house. However it creates its own problems.
We also had that type on the house we had before that. When we had a break in one day when I was out, the thieves had locked the door on the inside so I could not get in with my key. I had to get my next-door neighbour to break in for me so I could find out what had happened and ring the police!

My husband was an architect. Part of his job was to specify door furniture, so I know this lock is okay for insurance purposes.

I never bothered about locking the front or back doors until there was a spate of burglaries near us and a policewoman recommended that I lock the front door at night. She said most doors, unless they are double-locked from inside - are very easily opened.

I lock the front and back doors when I go to bed. The dog barks if he hears anything unusual (in fact he barked one night and we heard the front door slam. We thought it was our son - who was staying with us at the time - coming home late. When we got up in the morning there was a dent at the edge of the front door where someone had forced it open - the door slamming must have been our dog scaring him off).

I suppose it's sensible to take these precautions but I don't like living in such a state of heightened paranoia that I keep doors locked even in the daytime. Perhaps I'd feel differently if we didn't have a dog.

Our new front door is state of the art, sounds like the one durhamjen has. It's very difficult to break in, providing we use the key to lock it. We had 4 new doors a couple of years ago, all top scale anti burglary but all need to be locked whereas the old Yale ones locked when closed.