Owning your own home

No chance.
Nice place, but the people...
Pals of mine were looking to buy in a similar small town in Norfolk (but obvs nothing that scale) and they met the neighbours who seamed nice until they said something racist along the lines of that chap in the lift scene in Alan Partridge, without noticing their daughter wasn't white.
Not for me.
Also the food.

If the glass is smooth, security film may be an option.

Or replace the glass with a laminated pane.

Is it evident that you actually have a thumbturn?

I hadn’t heard of security film, interesting. Yes, you can see the thumbturn through the glass.

Thumbturn shield? Probably looks shite though.

If you convert a garage (attached to the house) to a kitchen, without changing any of the external openings, do you need planning permission?

Probably not, but it probably would require BC notification and approval.

Roller shutter kitchen sounds cool ;-)

We got security glass (I believe laminated with film) to go on the outside of the leaded lights. I imagine you'd have more options for installers of that.

Do you have other locks in the door? A lot of Yale type, IME, will pop with a good kick / batter anyway so the other locks should be the primary defence. If you’re worried and spending money i would recommend a London bar as well

We've just had our cunt buyer walk away from our sale a week or so prior to exchange because he's a cunt. Demanded big discounts and that we basically refurb the house at the last minute (his survey took place a month ago and identified nothing material) and walked when we politely declined. We know a bunch of people who've had issues with cash buyers from China doing this, but wanted to deal with this cunt on face value. Turns out, he's just a shitbag cunt.

We have a London bar and hinge bolts, Banham lock, so the window is the weakest link.

I have been pondering this. How do you square the circle of wanting non-keyed locks on the inside so you can get out in an emergency with having windows on the door that makes decent locks a bit redundant? Anyone any suggestions?

Cash buyers and more so foreign cash buyers will tend to be quite aggressive, simply because it doesn't cost them anything to be so due to the nature of their position.

We sold our flat to a foreign cash buyer; our position was 'you exchange by this date for this money, and if you do not, piss off'.

Still didn't stop them from trying to stiff me regarding some unpaid works on the place though, which fortunately I spotted and had to tell them again how things were going to be. Exhausting and boring in equal measure.

Is BC building control?

The security mitigation my in-laws use is to have their burglar alarm turned on for downstairs only at night.
I became aware of this the first time I stayed there and needed a dump at 02.00. My wife forbade me from using the upstairs john and sent me to use the downstairs, cue sirens and flashing lights waking the whole house as I was mid-crap.

Ha! Currently has wood and glass doors - but we would plan to put an internal divide into the space so 1/3 of the existing garage becomes storage, and the rest converted to kitchen. Light source from south facing garden at back of the house, but also needs another internal wall removed.

Yep.

Suspect that if someone has converted a garage to a kitchen and didn't replace / deal with the openings they probably haven't gone through BC. Y0u'd just need to take a view on the problems this could cause you. Mostly around the likelihood of it all being one massive bodge.

But if it's you looking to convert then you'd need to notify and probably give them some plans and show that you are going to meet regs when its converted to a habitable space.

Cash buyers and more so foreign cash buyers will tend to be quite aggressive, simply because it doesn't cost them anything to be so due to the nature of their position.

Yeah, that we were expecting, but the nature of the comms was just strange - they'd been pushing for ages to get in by Xmas, and we'd been pushing up the chain, then they walk away a few hours after making daft demands, and have to start from scratch elsewhere, after paying for the survey etc. But we don't even know if they were really cash buyers, if they were really buying as a family or investment buyers, or anything really. Pretty sure he/they're proper cunts tho.

I have a door chain and don't worry about it all that much.

Our conclusion was the odds of being at home when someone decides to make use of the door window are fairly slim / we'd be alerted to the noise fairly quickly, so having the thumb turn deadbolt out of easy reach of the window meant it'd always be easy to leave in case of fire, slow if someone did decide to do us over - first smash, then two locks gives us a minute or two.

The Banham's allows you to lock it so that it can't opened from the inside: that's the solution for when we're away: get through the tiny window but not be able to open the lock from the outside through the door.

but also needs another internal wall removed

If that wall is the original back wall of the garage I suspect you do need BC?

Will need building control and structural drawings etc but unless you’re adding mass then I don’t think you need planning permission

That’s where I’m from. You done me bad

On the security front. It seems like people miss the point of Banham locks. The keys can't be copied easily. That is one of the main benefits. There are a few alternatives that are similar but Banham is one of the most popular. The lock bodies are pretty decent but there are a lot of euro spec locks that compete with or exceed the security of a Banham lock body. Aside from that they look good on victorian doors.

The advantage of keys that can't be copied is most easily felt in larger properties where a lot more people need to have access (cleaners, builders, lodgers etc.) and you don't want them making copies. So not really about burglary. Banham can do super high security though, like Pimlico Plumbers do plumbing.

Security laminate glass over the top or behind the glass in the door would help a lot. The central plastic in the security glass makes it very difficult to smash or cut when it's in place.

I've been to a few places after burglaries to make the doors safe, spoken to the forensics people for tips.

Mostly the doors have been forced by shouldering or kicking them, a properly fitted London bar helps to avoid this. In one case someone managed to bend the Banham security cage on a window open, still no idea how they got the leverage but given enough time to work on a door or window they will find a way.

Burglars do not recognise your most expensive possessions. They'll ignore a Damien Hurst and steal your laptop, so make sure you have backups of your data. An alarm does limit the time they will spend in the house, especially if it's loud throughout the house as that's deliberately unsettling. Cameras are not a great deterrent but they are helpful as an early warning that you are being cased. It's very easy to avoid leaving forensic evidence. If you have a safe they will stop at nothing to remove it, potentially creating tens of thousands of pounds of damage to achieve it.

Any recommendations for a solicitor to help sort out an already agreed purchase of freehold? Solicitors who help with house purchase were not great and both people we dealt with have moved firms.