One family, two trades, one number to ring

How we got here

Ren-Lock is a new business built on an old trade. The family behind it came up through kitchens and bathrooms: fitting them, and then building the rooms they went into, and from there into commercial and domestic building work. Carpentry, joinery, groundworks, fabrication, and the thousand small problems that come with the ins and outs of real buildings.

Fire and security came out of that work rather than instead of it. If you are already hanging doors, you learn quickly which doors have to hold a fire back and what makes the difference between a fire door and a door with a label on it. If you are already fitting out commercial premises, you find out how much of the fire safety equipment on the wall has not been touched in six years.

That is the business: fire safety equipment and physical security, supplied, fitted and serviced by people who came up through the building trades rather than through a sales office.

What being family-run actually changes

It is a phrase every trade website uses, so it is worth saying what it means here in practice.

• The person who quotes is the person who turns up. There is no subcontractor between you and us, and nobody to blame if it is wrong.
• The number does not change. You are not calling a national line that routes you to whoever is nearest this week.
• We would rather lose the job than oversell it. Plenty of extinguishers we are called to condemn are fine, and plenty of forced door frames can be repaired instead of replaced. We say so. That costs us a sale and keeps a customer.
• We customise. Chrome and pink extinguishers for rooms where a red cylinder would ruin the finish. Brackets fabricated on site when the wall will not take a standard fixing. Keyed-alike suites so a property runs on one key.

What we are qualified in

The trade skills under all of it are real and time-served. Carpentry and joinery to Levels 1 and 2, groundworks and building experience, and on-site fabrication where an off-the-shelf part does not exist. Extinguishers are commissioned, serviced and refilled to the manufacturer's schedule with the records a fire risk assessment needs.

How a job runs

• Enquire. A couple of lines and a postcode. Photographs help.
• Free estimate. Most jobs we price from a description; fire doors, multi-site contracts and anything structural we would rather come and look at, also free.
• A realistic date. Emergencies we try for the same day. Planned work is normally one to two weeks, often sooner, and we tell you which it is rather than promising tomorrow and arriving next month.
• Paperwork afterwards. Service records, what was fitted and where, and invoices itemised so an insurer or an assessor can follow them.

Where we work

We are based in Stratford, East London. Call-outs: lock-outs, break-ins, boarding up: run across London and the Home Counties. Supply, installation and servicing contracts we take on anywhere in the UK. We will tell you honestly when we are too far away to be the right firm. See areas we cover.