A question we often get asked is what qualifications does a locksmith need to be considered a professional in the industry? The short answer is none which surprises a lot of people and what a lot of the public don’t understand is that unlike many trades such as gas engineers, electricians etc the locksmith industry is completely unregulated.
What Does Unregulated Actually Mean?
Basically this means that anyone can tout for work as a locksmith regardless of training and qualifications which is why it’s considered to be the industry with the most rogue traders where you can get what are typically classed as handymen watching a few Youtube videos buying some tools and then offering their services as an emergency locksmith and charging ridiculous fees for the one off jobs they get.
Another worrying thing is than there is also no requirement for someone trading as a locksmith to be DBS checked so you could be letting a criminal or even a sexual predator into your home but that’s a topic for another article, today we’ll cover the skills and knowledge that a professional locksmith should have.
Essentially to be considering a professional in the locksmith industry you simply need to know the job, own the correct tools and be skilled in things like non-destructive entry which is gaining access to a locked house or business without damaging the door, door frame or lock so that if the person has simply misplaced their keys or locked their keys inside their home or office then all they need is for a locksmith to gain entry by manually picking the lock of using an electronic lock pick tool, a skill that the rogue traders simply don’t have.
An amateur or rogue trader, whichever you believe is the correct terminology, will turn up equipped with a drill, a chisel and a hammer and immediately start drilling and chiselling your door and then you end up paying for their destruction, which is ludicrous.
Surely All Locksmith Have Been on a Locksmith Training Course?
Yes, most locksmith, even the amateurs have taken some sort of training course, however there are a number of companies exploiting the fact that the industry is as yet unregulated by offering cheap 3 days courses and a meaningless certificate at the end. One of these companies is well known to the professionals of the industry and creates a vast amount of amateur locksmiths each year whilst pretending to be some sort of private regulatory body due to their official sounding name.
The fact is, and we are certain that all readers realise this, is that you cannot learn a trade in 3 days, any trade, let alone a trade as complex as the locksmith industry.
Are there any Officially Recognised Locksmith Training Courses?
Yes, In 2019 two official
Ofqual Diplomas where launched which where considered to be the first step in bringing regulation to the industry. For those who don’t know, Ofqual stands for The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation and is a non-ministerial government department that regulates qualifications, exams and tests in England. There is no higher qualification and no other Gov’t regulated qualification in the locksmith industry.
The two diplomas available are:
The Level 3 Diploma in Commercial Locksmiths & Property Security
The Level 3 Diploma in Automotive Locksmiths & Vehicle Security
However, because these are official qualifications they take a number of months to complete and can only be taught by qualified teachers at a recognised college, so when someone looking for a new trade considers the locksmith industry they see the cheap 3 courses as the easy way into the industry and the quickest way to start earning money from it, failing to realise that they’ll fail to learn the trade properly and end up getting a bad reputation as a rogue locksmith forcing them to pay for membership with the private company who trained them, This also allows them to hide behind the companies name rather than trading as under their own name from their own website.
This is in fact the business model of many of these private crash course companies its not about training a locksmith properly it’s about a monthly membership to a club they have no option but to join.
So how do you find a decent Locksmith?
This is a difficult one, most people will search Google for a
nearby Locksmith or a locksmith in their town, but unfortunately you can never be sure whether the locksmith you ring is qualified or has simply taken one of the worthless 3 days training courses. You should also avoid large self proclaimed national companies who say that they have a locksmith in every area as this is usually where the rogue traders hide after ruining their own reputation.
The customers believe they are contacting a large locksmith company and getting one of their fully trained, qualified engineers, because this is how many of these national companies portray themselves, when in reality the company is sending an independent locksmith, sometimes from miles away, who has signed up to their website or database and when the locksmith does a bad job or overcharges it’s pass the buck time and the national company will admit that all their locksmiths are independent and you should complaint direct.
There is one exception and this is Smart Locksmiths,
www.smartlocksmiths.co.uk. Smart Locksmith does cover the whole of the UK just like other national companies but the big difference is that each independent locksmith listed on their site displays their own contact information so you are contacting the locksmith direct with the added advantage that all members have been vetted and checked out by Smart Locksmiths so you’ll find no rogue traders or crash course amateurs.
So do you need to have the Official Ofqual Diploma to be considered a professional locksmith?
No… There are many professional locksmiths who haven’t taken the official Ofqual courses as they where only launched a couple of years ago, Lots of locksmiths have learnt the trade from their fathers and their fathers from their fathers before them and like any trade each generation picks up new skills along the way, also, before the Ofqual courses where launched there where a few official locksmith training colleges such as
Train Locksmiths Locksmith Trading College in Greater Manchester and
Keytek Locksmith Training Academy in Dorset offering decent locksmith training courses taught by actual time served locksmiths with teaching qualifications, however most of the decent locksmith training colleges have now switched over to the Ofqual Diplomas, This does make it easier to spot the rogue locksmith training centres as they continue to offer their meaningless 3 days courses.
In Summary
The locksmith industry remains unregulated and the rogue training centres continue to operate but who’s to say that the release of the Ofqual diplomas wasn’t the first step in fully regulating the industry?
Need a locksmith in
Chineham, Hampshire? Smart Locksmiths has you covered
