Keyholding vs In-House Response — The True Cost Comparison

In-house callouts mean waking employees, sending them alone to dark premises, and hoping nothing goes wrong. Employment law, lone-worker guidance, and your duty of care all still apply at 3 a.m. If someone is injured or threatened, the incident becomes an HR and reputational issue for your business — not a line item that stayed off the spreadsheet because you avoided a retainer.

Professional keyholding pairs a secured key store, trained responders, and liaison with police or alarm receiving centres. You pay for predictability: defined response times, documented escalation, and officers who do this work every week rather than once a quarter. For many organisations the comparison is not salary versus invoice but resilience versus regret.

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