The Keyholding Company goes back to school with Thomas’s London Day Schools

The Keyholding Company has been awarded a contract by Thomas’s London Day Schools to provide alarm response services at six of their sites.

Established over 30 years ago, Thomas’s London Day Schools are a group of family-run, co-educational schools for children from the ages of two and a half to thirteen.

They educate over 1,950 children and their ethos is based on providing each child dignity and self-esteem through a sense of achievement, be it academic, artistic or sporting.

The Keyholding Company acts as a registered key holder to Thomas’s London Day Schools and is contracted to attend alarm activations, providing an efficient call out response, 24/7.

Brian Butler, facilities manager at Thomas’s, said: “The school has grown considerably over recent years and each location has a number of buildings spread out across the campus. Many staff members have access to these buildings, so it’s inevitable that as a result of unintentional human error, they’re susceptible to some alarm activations.”

“As the schools are situated in residential locations, it was of paramount importance to us to reduce any undue disturbance to our neighbours with noisy alarms going off at weekends and during the night time and make sure activations are attended to as speedily as possible.

“Our other key area of concern was that we wanted to eliminate the inconvenience of staff attending false alarm activations and the potential physical risk they may face as a result of attending a genuine activation. “We didn’t want to ask staff who had already worked a full day to attend activations in the middle of the night or during weekends and holiday periods and wanted to exercise a duty of care to our employees.

“As a result, we decided to outsource this important role and put the responsibility in the hands of a professional security organisation.

“After researching the industry, it became clear that The Keyholding Company has established a reputation for providing professional, efficient and cost-effective security solutions, so I was confident in choosing them as our contractor.”

In the event of an alarm activation, a trained and licensed Key Warden will attend the site, check the premises, reset the alarm or wait for an engineer if required, until the premises are re-secured.

In the event of an incident, if necessary they will organise for emergency contractors to attend, make good the damage and ensure the property is left secure as soon as possible.

Butler said: “The Keyholding Company has demonstrated a real understanding of our security requirements. “We no longer have to ask staff to be on standby or put themselves in any potential dangerous or difficult position and it gives us great peace of mind to know that during vulnerable times the security of our premises is their priority.”