Local Home Services

A couple of years ago If you would have ask anyone in the locksmith industry whether or not there was an official recognised qualification that locksmiths could acquire the answer would have been no.

At one time there were simply a handful of private companies putting together their own qualifications – which just like printing your own money is worthless to anyone else – and taking it upon themselves to decide what level of training a locksmith would need before he/she could go out there and actually do the job properly.

However, as the internet became more and more popular and locksmith training companies started to advertise more online via websites and social media the competition heated up and prices plummeted – as they do when this happens – and so did the quality of the courses.

With courses now so cheap many self-proclaimed training centres simple packed classes to the maximum and reduced the courses to fewer days, some as few as 3 days.

Now we all know from research done in high schools and colleges over the years that smaller classes are better as the teacher has more time with each student and can see which students are picking things up quickly and which students are struggling and its exactly the same when learning a trade.

The thing with these private courses is that the pass rate was always 100%, no one could fail, and people were simply paying a fee for worthless certificate and sometimes ongoing membership fees to a private club or locksmith call centre service, more about these in a future article.

Another issue was the length of the courses… You can’t learn a trade in 3 days, any trade, let alone a complex one such as a locksmith where you’re dealing 100’s of different scenarios such as keys snapped in doors,  fault locks, faulty/broken gearboxes, different types of locks and keys, specialist tools etc.

The result was the industry being flooded with amateurs all claiming to be qualified locksmiths because they had a certificate from a private company saying so… Don’t get me wrong, there are 100’s of time served, qualified locksmiths out there who know their job and are able to do it well, unfortunately in recent years all locksmith seem to have been tarred with the same brush and the expert lock picker seemed to be being treated the same as the guy who turns and immediately gets his drill out without even looking at the lock.

In 2019 Ofqual, the Government Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation decided to regulate two locksmith qualifications, one for commercial and domestic locksmith and one for automotive locksmiths, the history behind this decision isn’t important, but apparently the industry was researched and people were shocked at the lack of official training for someone who is basically in charge of home/business security.

There has been an official Ofqual Level 3 Diploma for Electricians for years, so why not locksmiths?

When Ofqual regulates a training course it becomes the official course for that industry  and appears on the gov.uk websites as an official qualification. The fundamental different between the official Ofqual locksmith training courses and private locksmith training courses is that the Ofqual locksmith training courses take many months to complete and can only be taught by qualified teachers at a registered college or university.

At first this caused a problem as there were only a couple of locksmith training centres in the UK who actually had college status and had trainers who did in fact have teaching qualifications. They where Train Locksmiths Training College based in Greater Manchester and Keytek Locksmith Training Academy based in Dorset.

Colleges and universities could start to offer official courses from 2020 but needed teachers who were also qualified locksmiths; we believe the University of Manchester was one for the first universities in the country to offer the course and with official courses you get official funding too so a cheap £500 3 day course may sound good at first but  you can’t get ANY funding for private, made up courses, yet for official Ofqual courses you can get Government grants such as the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund, Student Finance, Welsh Government ReACT funding and Ministry of Defence ELCAS Credits (for ex-military)

Today, there are more places where you can do the official Ofqual diploma and in the industry does now recognise the Level 3 Diploma in Commercial Locksmiths & Property Security and the Level 3 Diploma in Automotive Locksmiths & Vehicle Security as the official locksmith qualifications and we have already heard of instances where this actual qualification was required to work on certain sites.

Official Gov.uk links

• Level 3 Diploma in Commercial Locksmiths & Property Security
• Level 3 Diploma in Automotive Locksmiths & Vehicle Security

Because the locksmith industry has no regulatory body the amateur training centres continue to push their worthless 3 day course and are doing nothing wrong legally in doing so, however there is one company ( that I’d rather not mention here) that uses vague wording and hints that there are some sort of official regulatory body without actually staying those words (they even get people to sign up and pay a monthly fee after taking their 3 day course ) which we believe is wrong and the public and new trainee locksmiths need to be careful and look for the official Ofqual qualification.

Remember….. If it’s not Ofqual, it’s not official….