Background

For almost 20 years UK social housing providers have been using "electronic keys" to allow tenants to gain entry through communal doors into their residential housing blocks. Initially these "electronic keys" were employed by local authorities (London Boroughs, City Councils, District Councils etc) in their high rise blocks, where the quality of life for their tenants had been severely reduced by antisocial behaviour. By improving the security of the communal areas of these blocks, i.e. employing combination of electronic key access for tenants and telephone door entry for visitors, the quality of life was improved for the tenants and considerable savings were recorded in the maintenance costs for these blocks. A summary of these benefits is listed below.

Elimination of drug taking in communal areas

The communal areas within some housing blocks had become popular places for a variety of drug taking, not only leaving the dangerous debris behind (which presented a high medical risk especially to tenants' children) but also attracted drug dealers and their associated crimes. By securing these areas and only allowing access to bonafide people, drug users were forced to find alternative places to deal...

Reduction of Vandalism

With long "soulless corridors", hidden lifts and lift areas combined with large communal entrances, these areas become rife with vandalism, ranging from simple graffiti to more serious damage to fixtures and more dangerously, damage to the lifts themselves. This vandalism obviously had a major detrimental effect on the "well being" of the community, forcing tenants to stay locked behind their apartment front doors (which often had improved security measures installed). By installing tenant access control, social landlords were able to create defendable spaces, either in the whole block, or in larger configurations, landing by landing. These defendable spaces not only considerably reduced the maintenance costs due to vandalism, but also created a new sense of community, with tenants placing plants outside their apartments and "chatting" in corridors with their neighbours.

Controlling Antisocial Behaviour

Particularly within the local authority run blocks, due to their legal obligation to house homeless families, the problem of antisocial behaviour had been growing for a number of years. This behaviour may range from relatively mild "loud music", a nuisance made from some of the building techniques used in the 1960s and 1970s), to racism, intimidation and even physical assault. Even when individuals or families were evicted and excluded from certain blocks, there was no physical way of stopping them entering the blocks and persisting with their antisocial behaviour, as they often retuined their mechanical keys.

The introduction of "electronic keys" enabled landlords to effectively "lock out" tenants who have been evicted or had exclusion orders placed upon them, without even having to confront the ex tenant. This obviously improved the safety and working conditions for the housing staff as well as improving the "standard of life" for the vast majority of good tenants.

Improved Monitoring and Control

With the old traditional mechanical keys, it proved both expensive and difficult to manage the number of keys issued out to tenants. Not only would the mechanical cylinders in each communal door need changing, but also each tenant would have to be issued with a new set of entrance keys. Electronic keys not only enabled housing staff to delete or add individual keys, when they were reported lost or tenants moved in or out of the block, but also to a limited extent monitor key usage. Although individual tenant electronic could not be accurately monitored or recorded due to the data protection act, the issuing of new keys to the blocks and/or general usage patterns could be monitored. This feature quickly enabled housing staff to detect if a flat was being used for inappropriate use i.e. "dole cheque drops", prostitution, secondary rental etc, again improving the environmental conditions for the tenants living in the blocks.

Tenant access control was quickly adopted by most social housing organisations throughout the country for the high rise and linked walkway blocks. These were often managed by either concierge staff within the blocks themselves and/or by dedicated housing staff often located in or near the high density (high rise) estates.

To improve "cost effectiveness" a trend developed for remote outlying blocks to be linked back to the central concierge via dedicated links, which would often include CCTV and tenant/visitor communication management. However as these were dedicated links, often over fibre optics or even microwave, they proved expensive to install and operate. Low cost radio links for the access control also initially looked promising , but proved unreliable and complicated. One company, PAC International Ltd, developed the ability for the tenant access control on remote sites to be linked over standard low cost PSTN (public telephone system network). This facility allowed the social landlord to quickly centrally manage tenant access control across a large number of blocks relatively simply and cost effectively. This solution became and remains popular with the larger metropolitan social landlords with high density housing stocks. However as labour costs to run concierges increased and overall housing staff levels have been reduced, these initially with still relatively high equipment costs, were not suitable for the vast majority of the landlords who have low rise low density housing stock.

For these low rise blocks the solution remained with simple stand alone products, which although very good at providing the benefits of "tenant access control" and are widely accepted, are difficult to manage , requiring a visit to each block to make any changes or collect data. This is obviously not popular with both management and staff as it is both costly in "man hours" to visit the blocks (in all weathers) and requires staff to stand in public areas whilst carrying out the work, thus exposing them to at the best queries from tenants and visitors, and at worse threats of violence.

To overcome this issue access control manufacturers introduced the ability to remotely connect these smaller systems over telephone lines using PSTN. The installation and line rental costs proved expensive leading to the introduction of wireless GSM solutions. These proved very popular with new systems, however a significant majority of social landlords have yet to adopt this new technology to manage the large number of stand alone systems already installed. KMS products have been designed specifically to make upgrading of existing stand alone systems simple and cost efective. Existing readers and in many cases power supply's and metal cabinets can remain in place with replacement Simplekey upgrade door controllers complete with the relevant modem fitting in place of the existing controller.