Choosing the Right Security Door and Access Control for Your Block

Which Security Standards are Required for Housing Association Clients?

Everyone has the right to feel safe in their home, whether they own their property, rent from a private landlord or pay a housing association. Residential security is almost a human right and although incidents have decreased, the safety of tenants has never been more important.

According to the same figures, before the pandemic in 2019/2020, there were 402,000 recorded burglary offenses committed in the United Kingdom. Perhaps shockingly, one survey performed with 2,008 UK adults found that 25% admitted to not locking their front door when they leave the house and 17% of these actually already having been the victim of a previous burglary.

Many housing association tenants reside in small, medium and large residential blocks that usually provide an external security door as well as each individual apartment’s own front door. An external security door is an extra barrier to entry when it comes to helping to prevent those that would do harm from entering the building.

High standard security doors such as UKAS accredited PAS 24 models are designed with multi-locking features, auto-close and access control features that limit the access of individuals not authorised to be in the building. However, security disregard for tenants does occur when maintenance personnel, HA staff and tenants themselves jamb open doors with objects and this should be discouraged whenever possible since it completely contradicts the entire point of installing expensive access control features.

 

What is Access Control?

Access control has been around since the 1960s when unauthorized access to individuals needed to be prevented. Essentially, access control permits or denies access to a building or area based upon electronic interaction with a system rather than with standard key-based entry.

The first access control system that was widely used was the keypad PIN system, still in use today and used in combination with a card to access your bank account. Since then, access control has grown to include such things as swipe cards, RFID readers and even facial recognition.

However, the common access control key method for housing association residential block access is with the use of a key fob; a small device that is electronically scanned by a reader placed at the security entrance of a building.

 

How is Access Control Used?

Access control either permits or denies entry to a building or area based on pre-programmed credentials present in an electronic device. Generally, there consists of a tag (receiver) and a tag reader (transmitter) such as a key fob and its associated scanner, which operates using radio waves and controls the locking mechanism of a door.

In a general residential scenario, each key fob contains a unique ID number that is also stored in the database of the access control unit (usually a PC) that is connected to the electromagnetic locking system of the security door. When scanned, and provided the fob’s ID number matches against one stored in the corresponding database, the locks of the high-security doors open and grant entry to the building.

Time and date stamps for each keyfob’s usage may also be recorded for security and legal purposes such as overuse that could indicate subletting in a residential scenario, for example.

Security Door Solutions

UK Fire and Security Doors provide multiple safety door solutions and have extensive knowledge of residential security from our work with many local authorities all over the United Kingdom where we have provided full installation of residential and office building high security and fire doors. We offer two bespoke ranges of security doors, each with its own distinct properties:

● Signature; adaptable communal security doors with interchangeable parts.

● ThermSecure; heat-efficient security door for maintaining warmth.

We are able to work with you in order to accurately develop the optimal solution for your security door needs. Our engineers do this by assessing the work that needs to be done and building a security door profile around this assessment.

 

Signature Range

Our signature range can be adapted to fit almost any building through our comprehensive bespoke solutions and are best suited for most situations where the heating of the space outside of the door isn’t necessary. Signature doors can therefore be applied to exterior security, building entrance and apartment front doors.

 

ThermSecure

Best used for scenarios that require warmth to be maintained between two spaces, such as heated corridors and offices, ThermSecure provides an excellent solution for maintaining the warmth and energy efficiency of a given area.

As such, ThermSecure is recommended for new builds where energy-efficient solutions are required by law.

The design of each door is carefully planned owing to specific information about the requirements of the building, sizes, the area and what exactly you want to achieve. Following this, we can then provide you with an exact schematic of each door and its corresponding components, with a detailed explanation of why they have been included.

Example 2
Door Handle
Daventry Porch

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