Locked out on the water
One lockout between January and June happened on a canal boat—a reminder that the front door needing attention is not always attached to a house.
LockScout Research · January—June 2026
The State of UK Locksmith Services — H1 2026
Britain’s locksmith reviews reveal a trade far broader than the classic lockout. The useful details—what failed, who was waiting, how help arrived and what it cost—sit beneath the star rating.
2.2×vehicle-key stories compared with lockout stories
98.1%of captured ratings were five-star
915written accounts explicitly mentioned a child, vulnerable person or pet
Data behind this report:51,426 captured reviews·49,170 written·4,234 provider records
What Britain needed unlocked
Vehicle keys—not lockouts—led the clearly identified reasons customers described.
Car and van keys appeared 2.2× as often as explicitly identified lockout stories.
8.5%
Car & van keys
Keys, fobs, ignitions and vehicles formed the biggest clearly identified situation.
4,201 written experiences
Beyond front doors
A locksmith was not always called to a front door.
Locks appeared on windows, garages, gates, safes and even bathrooms. Choose an object to explore the less obvious side of the trade.
657
Windows
customer stories involved this object.
The locksmith paradox
A reviewer managed to lock their keys inside the postbox—the key to opening it had become the thing trapped behind the lock.
The suitcase that kept its zips
A jammed suitcase had been written off as a cut-the-zips job. The reviewer instead described it being opened carefully without damaging the zips—and said no charge was made.
When people or pets were involved
When children, vulnerable people or pets were involved, the lockout became more urgent.
Across the UK, 915 written accounts explicitly mentioned a child, vulnerable person or pet. In 218 of them, a lockout or failed door was part of the same emergency.
915
written accounts explicitly mentioned a child, vulnerable person or pet
24%
also involved a lockout or failed door218 urgent human situations
The dog that turned the lock
A Newfoundland dog somehow locked its owner outside while three dogs remained indoors. With no phone, the owner borrowed a neighbour’s and reported being back inside about 15 minutes later.
A bathroom became an emergency
One toddler locked themselves inside a bathroom. The reviewer said help arrived straight away and the door was open within minutes.
Waiting for help
Among customers who shared an arrival time, the typical wait was 25 minutes.
Half of the 3,293 arrival times shared by customers fell between 15 minutes and one hour.
25 mintypical arrival
15 min25% arrived by
25 mintypical wait
60 min75% arrived by
How the job ended
Replacement appeared more often than repair.
Not every lock problem ends the same way. The written record leaned toward changing hardware rather than fixing what was already there.
Beneath the stars
98.1% of captured ratings were five-star. The written accounts carried the differences.
When almost every rating is perfect, the useful detail sits in the customer’s story. A typical one-star review was twice as long as a typical five-star review.
Before and after the call
Price appeared in 27.9% of written accounts. 10.6% of websites published an actual price.
One figure records what customers discussed after the job; the other records what businesses disclosed before a call.
Customer review data
27.9%
talked about price, quotes or charges
13,712 of 49,170 written customer stories.
Business website data
10.6%
showed an actual price on their website
14.1% stated a fixed or upfront quote policy. Based on 5,466 website records checked in August.
27.9% mentioned price after the experience; 10.6% of websites published one.Separate sources and periods, shown side by side—not a like-for-like performance score.
What changed
Vehicle-key stories gained ground, price appeared more often and longer waits stretched further.
The same rules were applied to January–June 2025, July–December 2025 and January–June 2026. This shows how the captured review record changed—not whether the number of locksmith jobs changed.
Vehicle work pulled further ahead
8.5% of written reviews, up from 7.1% a year earlier.
Price appeared more often
27.9% of written reviews, compared with 26.3% a year earlier.
The typical wait held; longer waits widened
The typical arrival matched a year earlier and improved from 30 minutes in the previous half. But 75% arrived within 60 minutes, versus 45 a year earlier.
What LockScout takes from this
Vehicle-key work is becoming more prominent in what customers choose to write about, not merely larger in raw count.
Price is moving closer to the centre of the customer experience while advance website pricing remains uncommon.
A stable typical wait can hide a wider spread. For consumers, the live arrival estimate still matters more than a national midpoint.
Provider-base geography
London had the largest provider-base review cluster. Bristol led the rest.
Among locksmiths based in cities with enough data, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow completed the five largest review trails.
- 1London2,955
- 2Bristol785
- 3Birmingham674
- 4Leeds553
- 5Glasgow551
- 6Manchester488
- 7Cardiff480
- 8Nottingham412
- 9Liverpool403
- 10Bradford391
Explore how provider-base review patterns differed by city
34Vehicle-key led
Car and van-key work had the clearest lead.
17No single reason dominated
The leading reason was less than two percentage points ahead of the next.
11Failed-lock or door led
Failed locks or doors had the clearest lead.
1Lockout led
The classic lockout had the clearest lead.
Vehicle keys were the clearest reason.
Failed locks or doors led.
The only clearly lockout-led city cluster.
A city is described as “led” only when its leading reason is at least two percentage points ahead of the next. All 63 city clusters met the same minimum of 100 reviews and five provider records.
Provider-base regions
Review patterns differed across locksmith provider regions.
Explore the four nations and English regions by the locksmith’s cleaned business base—not the assumed location of every job.
London, North East, South East, Wales; each had at least 100 reported arrival times.
19.3% of 384 written accounts linked to providers based there.
31.5% of 1,303 written accounts linked to providers based there.
South East
4,597customer reviews
20 mintypical arrival
7.2%vehicle-key experiences
4.3%lockout experiences
Based on 4,438 written reviews and 307 arrival times. Region describes the locksmith’s base, not the job location.
What the first half taught us
The useful locksmith story sits beneath the star rating.
Vehicle keys led the clearly identified reasons for calling, unusual lockouts widened the picture, and urgent accounts often involved more than a broken lock. With 98.1% of captured ratings at five stars, the written details about method, timing and price carried the differences.
2.2×
Vehicle-key accounts appeared more than twice as often as lockout accounts—one sign that the familiar picture of locksmith work is incomplete.
What we’ll measure next
Three questions for the second half of 2026
These are measurement questions, not predictions. The full-year report will answer them with the same definitions and denominators.
Does vehicle-key work keep pulling away?
Its share rose from 7.1% to 8.5% year on year.
Does published pricing become more common?
In August, 10.6% of the 5,466 locksmith websites checked published an actual price. LockScout will repeat the same check.
Does winter widen the wait?
The typical arrival was 25 minutes, but the slower quarter stretched to 60. The full-year view will test whether darker months change that spread.
Continue with LockScout
Turn the findings into a better locksmith decision.
Use the report as context, then compare the businesses, services and questions relevant to the job in front of you.
Read this honestly
What the data can—and cannot—say.
The report turns a large review collection into national patterns. It does not treat every customer account as independently proven fact.
What is included?
51,426 unique captured reviews published from 1 January through 30 June 2026 and linked to 4,234 provider records classified as eligible core locksmiths. 49,170 included written detail.
How were earlier periods compared?
January–June 2025 (38,967 reviews), July–December 2025 (44,206) and January–June 2026 (51,426) were rebuilt from the same review source using the same eligibility, deduplication and text rules. Review-publication volume is not a measure of completed jobs. The definitions and benchmark table are intended to remain fixed for the full-year 2026 and future mid-year reports.
What do the percentages mean?
They measure the share of captured written reviews that explicitly described a situation. Categories can overlap. A missing mention does not mean the event did not happen, and the percentages are not estimates of all UK locksmith jobs.
Where did the small stories come from?
Six vivid, non-routine reviews from January to June were manually selected and revalidated against their eligible provider, date, rating and text hash. The report publishes anonymous paraphrases only. They are reported experiences, not independently verified events.
How are cities and regions handled?
City and regional comparison uses the cleaned provider base. It does not claim that the reviewed job happened there. City rankings require an A/B-tier base city, at least 100 reviews from January to June and at least five active provider records. Unresolved geography is excluded from geographic comparison.
Why are websites dated August?
The locksmith website layer was collected and quality-checked in August 2026. It shows what businesses currently communicate, not what they said between January and June and not verification of a customer outcome.
LockScout Research · H1 2026 · Published 1 September 2026