The things people actually ask before handing over a key

Enhanced DBS check, references from existing clients that you are welcome to take up directly, and a written service agreement signed before any key changes hands. One named person attends your property, the same person each time, and that person is accountable to you by name, not to a rota.

Yes. We hold dedicated key-holding insurance and public liability cover. We publish the insurer and the cover levels rather than simply saying insured, and the certificates are available on request. If your own policy requires a keyholder to hold particular cover, tell us and we will confirm in writing whether we meet it.

Every attendance produces a numbered record: date, time, who attended, the full checklist, anything found, and photographs. Key releases are logged separately, against which authorisation and which passphrase. Records are sequential, so a missing visit is visible rather than hidden.

Because the value is in the pattern, not the visit. An insurer wants an unbroken interval; a property wants consistent eyes that notice what changed since last time. Ad hoc visits give you neither, and they cost more per attendance.

Mayfair, Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Kensington and Chelsea as primary areas, with Marylebone, Fitzrovia, St John’s Wood, Hampstead, West Hampstead and Notting Hill by arrangement. If you are outside that, ask, and we will either say yes or tell you honestly that someone closer would serve you better.

No, and deliberately. Custodianship depends on being a small, consistent, accountable presence rather than a general pair of hands. We will coordinate a cleaner, supervise one and check the work, but we will not do the cleaning, and we will not run errands.

You are told immediately, with photographs, whatever the hour where you are. For anything urgent, water, security, or heating in winter, we act first to prevent damage and call you from the property. For anything that can wait, it goes in the report with a plain recommendation.

Only if they are named on your authorisation list and can give your passphrase. You set that list at the survey and can change it at any time in writing. Every release is logged. We will not hand a key to someone who turns up unannounced, however plausible the explanation.

Usually within a fortnight. The sequence is a fifteen-minute call, then the survey, then the agreement and handover. If you are travelling imminently, say so, and we can often compress it.

Notice terms are set out in your service agreement. On termination all keys are returned to you in person, and your records are retained only for as long as our retention policy requires. No exit fees, and no attempt to talk you out of it.