The order of the formalities when the building is involved too
Repair nothing before the police have been. Marks on the frame, splinters on the gallery floor, a crowbar print on a courtyard door in the 1st are all part of what gets recorded. Photograph from several angles, door closed then open, the lock area, the landing floor and the inside of the flat. Anything swept up before the police arrive is evidence that no longer exists.
Where entry was through a shared part — a carriage door forced on the Presqu'île, a traboule whose code had spread, the bike store in the basement — the managing agent must hear about it the same day. Two claims then run side by side: yours for your own door, the building's for the shared access, and they are not settled together.
The police receipt governs everything that follows with the insurer, and the claim goes in within the deadline your policy sets. Until then the door is closed provisionally, leaving untouched the marks still to be recorded on the frame. Note the rough time and the witnesses in the building: in a galleried courtyard in the 1st, a neighbour on the walkway sees the staircase from their own window, and what they heard often ends up in the report.
Closing the door again without spoiling a protected one
Within the listed area — Vieux Lyon, Fourvière, the Pentes, the Presqu'île — the street-facing appearance of a building door can require planning consent and the opinion of the architect for historic buildings. That does not stop the door being closed today, but it shapes what may be fitted afterwards as the permanent repair.
Temporary securing answers one plain aim: that the door holds and shuts. What that takes depends on the damage: a temporary lock, a strike rebuilt where it was torn from the frame, a leaf wedged after being lifted off its hinges, a board over a broken pane in one of the glazed courtyard doors so common in the 1st.
Keep the parts that come away: a drilled cylinder, a twisted faceplate, splinters of frame. Those pieces show how the attack was made, and an insurer sometimes asks to examine them. The permanent repair then covers all of what took the strain, not only what visibly gave way: in a silk-weaver's door the frame is bedded into masonry, and a crack running along that bed does not always show. Photographs taken beside a ruler keep the file moving.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our securing your home after a break-in page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Lyon.