Key safes: the one on your wall may be voiding your insurance

Key safes are genuinely useful. Carers, cleaners, dog walkers, family who visit, a relative who needs help getting in — for a great many households they solve a real problem.

They are also the single most common way people quietly weaken their home security and their insurance cover at the same time, without ever being told.

What the insurers actually say

Most home insurers require that any external key-storage device carries Secured by Design approval. A Secured by Design certified key safe does not invalidate cover, and several major insurers publish guidance confirming that.

The problem is the other kind. If a burglar opens a non-approved key safe and walks in with your key, insurers may treat that as a straightforward reason to refuse.

There is a second complication. Some insurers will not accept a key-safe entry as forced entry at all — and many policies pay out only where forced entry can be shown. Others do accept that breaking open a key safe counts. It varies by insurer, which means the only reliable answer is in your own policy wording.

Tell your insurer you have one. That single phone call converts an unknown into a documented fact, and it takes five minutes.

The standard to look for

Secured by Design — sometimes described as Police Preferred Specification — is the official police security initiative for the UK. Products are tested, not merely marketed.

The important and slightly uncomfortable fact: most key safes on sale do not hold it. Cheap key safes are widely available, look reassuringly solid, and open with very ordinary tools.

At the time of checking, the models reported as holding Police Preferred Specification in the UK were the Supra C500 Pro, Supra P500 Pro, Ark Tamo and Defender Pro-TEC. That list changes, and we take no payment from anyone — check the current position on Secured by Design’s own site rather than relying on this page or on a seller’s claim.

A “police approved” sticker on a product page is not evidence. The scheme’s own listing is.

Where you put it matters as much as which one

This is the part nobody thinks about, and the police have been explicit about it.

A key safe on the wall beside your front door is a target. It advertises that a key to this house is available outside the house. Officers have warned that safes fixed next to front doors are more likely to be attacked than ones placed somewhere less obvious.

Better placement:

• Round the back, or down the side, out of view from the street
• Not in a pool of light, and not visible from the pavement
• Not next to the door it opens
• On solid masonry, correctly bolted — a safe screwed into soft render comes off the wall with the fixings still in it
• Not beside a house number or a name plate, which turns it into a labelled invitation

If you already have one, moving it is cheap and takes an afternoon.

The other things people get wrong

The factory code. Change it. A surprising number are still on the code they arrived with.

Never changing it again. Every carer, cleaner, tradesperson and ex-partner who has ever had it still has it. Change it when anyone stops needing access.

Obvious codes. The house number, the year, 1234, 0000. Burglars try those first because they work.

Putting the whole set in it. Put in the one key that opens the one door. Not the car key, not the back door, not the garage, and never anything with an address tag.

Forgetting it exists when you move in. If you bought or rented a place with a key safe on the wall, you have no idea who knows that code. Change it or take it off entirely — see just moved in? whether to change the locks.

If you genuinely need one — usually for care

Do not let any of the above talk you out of it. For someone receiving care at home, a key safe is often the difference between help arriving and not.

Do it properly:

1. Buy a Secured by Design approved model. Verify on the scheme’s own site.
2. Fit it out of sight, on solid masonry, away from the door it opens.
3. Tell your insurer, and get their confirmation in writing.
4. Set a code that is not the house number, and write down who has it.
5. Change the code whenever someone leaves the list.
6. Review it every six months. Codes drift, carers change, people move on.

The alternatives worth considering

• A trusted neighbour. Free, and much harder to attack.
• A smart lock with revocable codes. Give each carer their own code and remove it when they leave. Check the insurance position first — the same “no forced entry” question applies.
• A key with a relative nearby, if there is one.

The one-line version

A key safe is a lock on the outside of your house. Treat it with exactly the same seriousness as the lock on the door — approved model, hidden position, managed code, insurer told.

Get those four right and it is a sensible thing to own. Get them wrong and you have fitted a small, weak, clearly-signposted second front door.

Sources

• Secured by Design — the official police security initiative
• MoneySuperMarket — do key safes invalidate home insurance?
• BBC — key safe warning after string of thefts

We take no payment from any manufacturer and sell nothing. Checked 27 August 2026 — approved model lists change, so verify before buying.