Change nothing before it has been recorded
Touch nothing before the police have been, whether it is a flat in a Mas du Taureau tower or a house on the rue de la République. The marks left on the leaf, the frame and the keep are part of what gets recorded, and a door already put right has erased them. Photographs are all that survive a repair.
Photograph from several angles as soon as you can — the outer face, the area round the cylinder, the frame, the splinters on the floor, then the inside — whether the damage is to a tower flat door or to a barn gate in the Village. Report the crime, then notify your insurer within the period your policy sets. Keep every part that comes off, drilled cylinder and wrenched lock included, and note when you found the damage.
In the meantime, temporary securing closes the property without spoiling the record: a stop-gap lock, a keep made good, an unhinged leaf braced back, a broken glazed panel boarded over. In a Village courtyard as on a landing serving four flats, no door is left standing open overnight. It holds until the permanent parts go on.
Fix the weak point, not just the door
Many break-ins here never touch the flat door. A cellar, a garage box, a bike store in the basement, a garden shed near the Grand Large: those doors close more lightly, and the spare keys left inside them often open the rest. Walk the whole plot before drawing conclusions, since bikes and tools stored down there tend to go first.
On old joinery it is almost never the lock that fails but the timber around the keep, levered out. A split frame in a rammed-earth wall needs fixings chosen for that material: refitting a new lock into a shattered jamb solves half the problem and leaves the other half exactly where it was, ready to give way again at the next attempt.
If keys have gone, the cylinders they matched have to be replaced — the courtyard gate in the Village, the garage and the basement cellar included, when they hung on the same ring. The written quote is presented before the work and the itemised invoice at the end: your insurer will want both, filed with the crime reference and the photographs.
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 Vaulx-en-Velin.