A court order imposed on a ten-storey block of flats in Bath has brought the role of the communal entrance into sharp focus, after months of anti-social behaviour linked to unauthorised access left residents facing intimidation, drug use and disorder inside their own building. Avon and Somerset Police and housing association Curo secured a three-month partial closure order for Berkeley House in Snow Hill on 1 July. The order restricts access to residents, their authorised visitors and approved personnel, giving police powers to act against other people entering the building.
Police said incidents during the preceding six months had taken place across communal entrances, stairwells, corridors and lifts. Reports included rough sleeping, drug use, discarded needles, violence, threats and intimidation. Residents and caretaking staff reported feeling unsafe, while the situation also affected building management and organisational costs.
Alongside enforcement and CCTV, measures have been taken to improve the building’s physical security. Police reported in May that Curo had resecured the block with new key-card fobs and removed coded access being used by non-residents. By June, officers said unwanted visitors to communal blocks in the area had reduced following improvements to access security.
For Birmingham security door manufacturer Warrior Doors, cases such as Berkeley House illustrate a wider point about the importance of the communal entrance in residential buildings.
“The entrance is the boundary between a public space and somebody’s home,” said Managing Director Brett Barratt. “Once somebody gets through that boundary, they have access to areas where residents quite reasonably expect to feel secure.
“That is why we have always believed the communal entrance has to be treated as a serious piece of security infrastructure. It is doing a job every hour of every day.”
Barratt’s view has been shaped by almost three decades of supplying communal entrances for councils, housing associations and residential developments. The engineering challenge is considerable. A communal door can experience hundreds of movements each day while also facing attempts to force it, kick it, prop it open or interfere with its locking system. Its specification therefore has to reflect the environment in which it will spend its working life.
Warrior manufactures its communal entrance systems from stainless steel, with options including security glazing, access-control systems and full-length hinges. Its communal doors are available to LPS 2081 SRB, a standard developed specifically around resistance to attempts to gain unauthorised access using stealth tactics. Warrior’s certified communal entrances are also approved by Secured by Design.
“Testing and certification give you an important baseline, but we also spend a lot of time thinking about behaviour,” said Barratt. “How is somebody actually going to attack that entrance? What happens when somebody kicks it repeatedly? What happens when people try to force it or interfere with the hardware?
“You have to engineer for the building as it really operates.”
That distinction matters because an entrance has two related roles. It controls who enters the building and it has to continue performing that function through years of intensive use. Warrior says every communal entrance it has installed remains in place, with some systems having served residential buildings for more than two decades. Its current communal entrance range uses stainless-steel frames and security glazing, with swing and automatic configurations designed for residential environments.
The experience at Berkeley House also demonstrates how an access problem can spread through the management of an entire building. Police intervention, housing officers, caretaking teams, cleaning, repairs, CCTV, access-control changes and legal proceedings can all become part of the response. At Berkeley House, police and Curo used injunctions, Community Protection Notices, patrols, access-control changes and ultimately the partial closure order as part of their work to address the situation.
For Barratt, those consequences belong in the conversation when housing providers consider investment in communal security.
“The purchase price of the entrance is one number,” he said. “The cost of managing problems around that entrance can involve many different parts of an organisation.
“If a housing officer is dealing with repeated complaints, a maintenance team is attending site, security personnel are required or residents are frightened about who is inside their building, those are real consequences. The door sits right at the beginning of that chain.”
It also brings a human dimension to a procurement decision. At Berkeley House, police described elderly residents, families with young children and other vulnerable tenants living with the effects of unauthorised people occupying communal areas. Some residents had become frightened to leave their flats.
Barratt believes that experience should influence the way communal security is considered at design and refurbishment stage.
“Residents should be able to walk out of their flat, use the lift or stairs and leave through the entrance without having to think about whether the building is secure,” he said. “When the entrance is doing its job, it becomes an ordinary part of everyday life. That is exactly what you want. People use their fob, the door opens, it closes securely behind them and they get on with their day.”
This leads back to a principle Barratt has increasingly advocated: treating communal entrances as long-term capital assets. Warrior’s approach is based around stainless-steel construction, independently tested security and components designed for demanding residential environments. The company’s LPS 2081 SRB communal entrances are tested by LPCB at BRE and recognised by Secured by Design.
“If you’re responsible for a residential building that could be standing for generations, it makes sense to look at the entrance on a similar timescale,” said Barratt. “You can invest in the entrance as an asset and expect it to perform year after year. That gives residents a secure boundary to their building and gives the housing provider something dependable to manage.”
The events in Bath required a coordinated response from the police, Curo and other agencies. Physical security forms one part of that wider approach, alongside housing management, policing, support for vulnerable people and enforcement. The lesson for those responsible for residential buildings comes much earlier.
A communal entrance may occupy a relatively small part of a development’s construction budget, yet every resident passes through it. It determines access to the spaces beyond it and works continuously throughout the life of the building. As Barratt put it: “People sometimes talk about these as though they are simply doors. In a communal building, they are much more important than that. They are the point where you decide who gets access to somebody’s home.”
