Notice Board
The Golden Thread for Security: DES Locksmiths
» A FAMILY BUSINESS THAT BEGAN AT home and now operates from a 5,500 sq. ft. premises on Canvey Island, Essex. Currently owned by brothers Lee and Nicky Crossman, DES Locksmiths’ ambitions are to shape the future of controlled access in high rise residential buildings for developers and housing associations.
How did it all begin? The Journey of DES has been built on strong family foundations. Our father David, started in the late 1960s as an electrical apprentice, but moved to access control working for other businesses until setting up his own in 1986 from the lounge at home – calling it D. E. S. Door Entry Systems, focusing on installation and maintenance of intercom systems. At that time both my parents being‘ the company’, went through the highs and lows of the 1980s and regularly brought their work home but they persevered and established the strong foundations for what we have today.
Lee left school in the early-1990s and worked with our Dad, however he went for interviews and eventually started work full time for a Lloyds of London Syndicate in City of London. He occasionally helped at weekends and on holidays with any larger installations. I left school in the mid-
1990’ s and joined my parents installing, servicing and maintaining intercoms and access control systems mainly in the London area.
In the late 1990’ s, we opened a retail premises providing, amongst other things, locksmith services as it complemented the work we were already doing nicely. My Dad studied and passed the MLA exam. We steadily expanded the locking products and moved into providing master suites for customers like Guinness Trust, Toynbee Housing and Peabody, as well as Castle Point Borough Council.
With the increasing workload, Lee joined full time in 2008 around the time when my mother became ill which prompted my father to semi-retire to care for her and in 2010 we both took over the business establishing DES Locksmiths. Sadly, our mother, Renee passed in 2011.
Over the next few years, we expanded our key suites, offering our clients innovative ideas and new ways of thinking about the security of their buildings with solutions that gave them key management and building access options. Our clients liked the applications, and we found ourselves taking on more staff.
It was always the plan to own our premises, and we had quickly run out of room in the old retail location. So, fast forward to 2019 and despite it being a big commitment, after renting for over 18 years, we made enquiries into an unbuilt premises on the Thamesview 130 Business Park, being created on south-west quarter of Canvey Island. Picture this: [ walking over piles of mud with hard-hats and big unfolded sheets of white paper, showing the developers vision for the space ]. We agreed a deal for a unit roughly four times bigger than our existing location, that was due to completed later in 2020, however due to the Pandemic, it took three years to finish our building.
The pandemic years were a strange time for everyone, we didn’ t know what the future held when we closed the office on 24th March 2020, but Peabody contacted us and asked us to come back
to work as they had a mounting backlog of Fire Risk Assessment work in communal spaces that they needed us to complete. We subsequently had the busiest two years we had ever know- nine members of staff, were completing 1000-1200 jobs per month.
We moved into the unit mid-2023 following six months of‘ pure hell’ getting the fit-out organised and quickly filled the ground floor.
Who do you work for?
As well as working with many smaller and medium scale building owners or controllers, we have worked with major organisations such as Guinness Trust and Peabody Housing for over 20 years, many other names you’ d recognise Like Sanctuary Housing, Gateway Property Management and Southend City Council. We strive to be at the forefront of improving security access to high-rise residential buildings- specialising in largescale high security master key suites.
The Golden Key In response to post-Grenfell fire safety concerns, we launched Golden Key Secure( goldenkeysecure. co. uk) to enhance fire brigade access to communal areas, particularly in high-rise buildings. Previously, fire brigade keys( FB) were widely available to purchase,
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MARCH 2025
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