New Home Security First Day | What to Change First

You've picked up the keys. The removal van is twenty minutes away. You've got roughly one hour before the house fills with boxes and people, and before you stop thinking clearly about anything other than where the kettle is.

That hour matters more than any security decision you'll make in the next five years.

Every previous owner, every tenant, every estate agent, every tradesperson who was ever handed a key, their copy still works. You have no way of knowing how many copies exist. The previous owner of a house I rescheduled in Ringmer last spring was a landlord who'd rented the property for eleven years through three different agents. He genuinely couldn't tell me how many keys had been cut. Neither could anyone else.

This guide tells you what to do, in order, on day one. Not eventually. Not when you get round to it.

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Step one: count every lock before you touch anything

Walk the property before the van arrives. You're not unpacking. You're auditing. Note every door, every gate, every padlock, every window lock, every shed. Take photos on your phone. You'll thank yourself later when you're trying to remember whether the side gate had a padlock or just a bolt.

Specifically, you're looking for:

• Front door lock (cylinder? mortice? both?)
• Back door lock, and whether it's the same type or different
• Any internal door with a lock (garage connecting door especially)
• Garage: up-and-over or side-hinged door, and whether it has a separate cylinder or a built-in lock
• Side gate: padlock, deadbolt, or neither
• Garden shed or outbuilding: hasp and padlock? Integrated lock?
• Window locks: key-operated or push-button? How many keys handed over?
• Any communal entrance if you're buying a flat

This takes ten minutes. Do it before anything else, because once the van's here you won't get a calm walkthrough again until next week.

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Step two: the front door cylinder. Change it today, not tomorrow

If the front door has a euro cylinder (the oval barrel that most uPVC and composite doors use), this is the one that gets changed first. It's a five-minute job if you have the right cylinder and a screwdriver. It's a thirty-pound part if you buy decent mid-range. There's no good reason to sleep a single night in a new property without doing this.

Before you buy a replacement, check the existing cylinder's size. Measure from the centre of the screw hole to each end. Common sizes are 35/35, 35/45, 40/40. If you buy the wrong size, the cam won't align with the lock mechanism and it won't function. Take a photo of the existing cylinder before you remove it, or pull it out and take it to a locksmith or builder's merchant to match it.

What cylinder to buy. The standard fitted in most new-build and mid-range composite doors is a TS007 1-star cylinder. Upgrade to a TS007 3-star (anti-snap, anti-pick, anti-bump) as a minimum. Brands worth trusting at that level: Avocet ABS, Ultion, Mul-T-Lock MT5+. An Ultion cylinder is around £45 to £65 depending on size and supplier. That's the cost of a takeaway. Don't buy a unbranded cylinder from a DIY shed because it's cheaper, you're not saving money, you're just keeping the previous owner's key working in a slightly different barrel.

If the front door has a five-lever mortice deadlock instead of, or as well as, a cylinder, you either need a locksmith to change it (the lock body has to come out, which requires specific knowledge of the mechanism) or you need to have it rekeyed. Rekeying is cheaper than replacing the lock body. Call ahead and ask.

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Step three: back door. Don't assume it's the same

Back doors are where most people stop thinking carefully. The front door gets the new cylinder. The back door gets a mental note that says "I'll sort that later."

Later is when someone walks through it.

Back doors on older East Sussex properties, particularly the terraces in Cliffe and Southover or the bungalows off the Nevill estate, often have a different lock type from the front. A lot of them still have BS3621 five-lever mortice deadlocks, which is actually good from a security standpoint, but which means you can't just swap the cylinder yourself. You need the lock rekeyed or replaced by a locksmith.

Some back doors have euro cylinders with a thumbturn on the inside. Some have night latches (Yales). Some have both. Identify what's there, check whether all the keys handed over actually work in it, and get it changed the same day as the front.

If the back door is a uPVC door with a multi-point locking system and a euro cylinder, same rules apply as the front door. Change the cylinder.

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Step four: the garage. The one everyone forgets

I've had more conversations with new homeowners who've thought carefully about every external door and completely ignored the garage than I can count.

The garage matters for two reasons. First, if it's an integral garage (attached to the house), the connecting door between the garage and the living space is effectively an external door. If someone gets into the garage, they're standing inside your house with nobody watching. That connecting door should have at minimum a BS3621 five-lever deadlock on it. Many don't. Check it.

Second, the garage's own door. An up-and-over garage door secured only by its standard built-in lock is not difficult to defeat. The mechanism on cheaper doors can be manipulated with a coat hanger through the weatherseal at the top of the door, it's a known attack and takes about forty seconds. If you have a standalone garage on a trading estate or a commercial unit on the Malling industrial estate, this matters even more because there's no one around at night.

For residential garages, a garage defender (a ground-mounted steel post that sits in front of the door) combined with a quality cylinder or deadlock on any side door is a reasonable approach. For integral garages: prioritise that connecting door. Treat it like a front door.

If the previous owners left a garage door remote, change the rolling code. That's usually done by pressing a combination of buttons on the motor unit, the manual for your specific opener will tell you how. If there's no manual, the make and model will be on the motor head and the instructions are online.

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Step five: side gates and garden access

A lot of burglaries in residential East Sussex don't come through the front door. They come round the back, through an unsecured side gate, to a back door that nobody can see from the street.

The side gate is the thing that makes that possible. If it's secured with a bolt that can be reached over the top, or a padlock that costs less than £15, it's not secured.

For a timber side gate: a closed-shackle padlock (Abus 55/40, Squire SS50CS, or Mul-T-Lock C13) on a properly fitted hasp, with the screws recessed or carriage-bolted through, is good enough. The padlock cost matters less than the hasp fitting. A £60 padlock on a hasp held with four 25mm screws into soft timber is worse than a £25 padlock on a hasp that's been through-bolted.

For a metal gate on a more modern property: check whether there's a cylinder lock already fitted. If so, change it or rekey it. If there's nothing, a bolt on the inside (a heavy tower bolt or a barrel bolt with a hasp for a padlock) gives you options.

While you're at it, walk the boundary. Is there a point someone can get over the fence easily? Low sections, a wheelie bin pushed up against the fence, a flat roof that steps up to a first-floor window? You don't need to fix everything today. But know where the weak points are.

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Step six: window locks. Slower job, but don't skip it

Most uPVC windows come with key-operated locks as standard, and new homes in the BN7 and BN8 postcodes typically have PAS24-rated windows if they were installed after around 2015. But that still leaves a lot of older properties where the window locks are the push-button type, or where the handles lock but the frame around them would give way with one sharp push.

Day one priority: locate all the window keys. They're often on the same ring as the door keys, or in a drawer in the kitchen. Make sure you have enough keys for every window lock in the house, if you only have one key for ten windows, cut copies immediately. If a window lock key is lost, that window is either permanently unlocked or permanently locked. Neither is good.

If windows don't have key locks at all (common in older properties, Victorian terraces in Landport for example), sash jammers are a cheap and effective retrofit. They fit to the frame of a uPVC or aluminium window and stop the window being pushed open from outside even if the handle lock fails. About £5 each, no drilling required. Fit them to ground floor and accessible upper floor windows.

For sash windows, a Brighton screw (a locking screw that pins the two sashes together) is the traditional fix. Effective and cheap. About £3 a window if you fit them yourself.

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Step seven: keys. Get them under control now

The number of keys handed over at completion is rarely the number of keys that exist. Estate agents have a master set. A neighbour might have had one "in case of emergencies." A previous tenant's adult child might have never handed theirs back.

Make a decision today about who gets a key to this property. Write it down. When you cut new keys (and you should cut a couple of spares, because you will lose one eventually), log who has each copy. It sounds bureaucratic. It takes three minutes. And it means that in five years when you're trying to decide whether to change the locks again, you actually know who has access.

If you're a landlord letting out a property in Lewes or along the A26 corridor toward Uckfield, this matters even more. Every time a tenancy ends, change the cylinder. Not rekey, not ask the outgoing tenant to return all keys. Change it. A new cylinder for a uPVC door is £40 to £70 depending on specification. The cost of a break-in because a former tenant held a spare key is not comparable.

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The things that can wait, and the things that can't

Not everything needs doing in hour one. Here's an honest split.

Can't wait past day one: - Front door cylinder - Back door cylinder or mortice rekeyed - Garage remote rolling code reset - A working lock on the side gate (even if it's just a bolt for now)

Should happen in the first week: - Connecting door to integral garage checked and upgraded if needed - Window key situation sorted and spares cut - Boundary walkthrough for obvious weak points - Check smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors (not security, but while you're auditing the property)

Can be planned properly: - Full upgrade to TS007 3-star cylinders throughout if you haven't done it at the front door - Installing a video doorbell - Outdoor lighting with PIR - Any access control if you're running a business from the property

The hierarchy here is about what stops a walk-in or opportunist entry on night one, versus what improves your security posture over time. Don't let the longer list paralyse you into doing nothing on day one.

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A specific note for landlords

If you're buying to let, and you've got a property in Ringmer, Kingston, Cooksbridge, or anywhere else around Lewes that's going to have a tenant in it within weeks of completion, the approach above applies to you before the tenant arrives, not after. You're handing a set of keys to someone who'll be there for a year or more. Make sure you know exactly what locks are on the property, what state they're in, and that the cylinders are ones you've had cut yourself.

Check also that the door and window locks on the property meet your insurance policy's requirements. Most landlord policies reference BS3621 for deadlocks and TS007 for cylinders. A policy that requires BS3621-compliant locks and finds a basic Yale night latch on the back door will not pay out on a forced-entry claim. That's not a hypothetical. I've spoken to landlords it's happened to.

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One last thing: the shed

I'll be brief. Garden sheds contain ladders. Ladders reach first-floor windows. First-floor windows are often less well-secured than ground floor ones because people assume they're out of reach.

Lock the shed. A decent closed-shackle padlock and a through-bolted hasp. Done.

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If you're moving into a property in Lewes or the surrounding BN postcodes and you'd rather have a locksmith change the cylinders while the van's being unloaded, call Fort Secure. We cover Lewes and the BN7 and BN8 areas, we're usually with you in under thirty minutes, and we'll tell you honestly over the phone what the job will cost before we arrive. No obligation to book if the quote doesn't work for you.