Front Doors near you

Start with what GOV.UK actually says, because the two lists it publishes pull in different directions. Among the alteration projects that might need building regulations approval it names replacing windows and doors. Among the exempt projects that do not need approval it names external doors, if less than half of the door is glazed. The practical reading is that the amount of glass in the leaf decides it: a largely solid front door can fall outside approval, while a door that is mostly glazing does not. GOV.UK is blunt about what exemption does not mean, warning that you must meet safety and energy efficiency standards even if you do not need formal approval.

Where approval is needed there are two routes. You can apply to a building control body, which GOV.UK describes as your local authority's building control department or a private registered building control approver. Or you can use an installer registered with a competent person scheme, which lets tradespeople self-certify certain work instead of you applying for approval. GOV.UK's authorised list covers replacement windows, doors, roof windows or rooflights in existing dwellings and names Blue Flame Certification, CERTASS, Certsure, Fensa, NAPIT and ASSURE, with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government responsible for authorising the schemes.

If work has already been done without approval, it is not necessarily unfixable. GOV.UK describes regularisation as retrospective approval for work already carried out without consent, available from a local authority building control body only, and notes that only work carried out after 11 November 1985 can be approved that way. You may have to open up or alter the work before a regularisation certificate is issued, which is a strong argument for settling the compliance route before the old frame comes out rather than years later when a buyer's solicitor asks.

Approved Document Q is the security standard people most often assume applies to them. It does not, in most cases. The document states at the outset that its guidance applies to new dwellings only, including dwellings formed by a material change of use, and repeats in its requirement table that Requirement Q1 applies only in relation to new dwellings. Q1 itself calls for reasonable provision to resist unauthorised access to any dwelling and to any part of a building from which access can be gained to a flat. Replacing the front door of an existing house simply does not engage it.

That makes security a contractual question rather than a building control one — and it means nobody will check it unless you do. Usefully, Part Q also tells you exactly what a good specification looks like, because you can borrow the new-build standard voluntarily. Secure doorsets under Part Q should be manufactured to a design shown by test to meet the security requirements of PAS 24:2012, or designed and manufactured in accordance with the document's own Appendix B. The performance section describes the aim plainly: doors and windows meet Q1 if they can resist physical attack by a casual or opportunist burglar by being both sufficiently robust and fitted with appropriate hardware.

The detail in Part Q is worth reading before you order, because it covers the things a brochure tends to skip. Letter plates should have a maximum aperture of 260mm by 40mm and be located or designed to hinder anyone attempting to remove keys with sticks or insert their hand. The main door for entering a dwelling, usually the front door, should have a door viewer unless there is another way to see callers such as clear glass in the door or an adjacent window, and the same doorset should have a door chain or door limiter. Frames should be mechanically fixed to the structure of the building in accordance with the manufacturer's installation instructions — a point that matters far more than the marketing on the leaf, since a strong door in a badly fixed frame is not a strong entrance.

Glazing in a front entrance is governed by requirement K4 of the Building Regulations, which asks that glazing with which people are likely to come into contact while moving in or about the building either breaks in a way unlikely to cause injury, resists impact without breaking, or is shielded or protected from impact. Approved Document K explains why doors are singled out: impacts with glazing, particularly glazing in doors and door side panels and at low level in walls and partitions, can cause cutting and piercing injuries, and for doors and side panels the risk is greatest between floor and shoulder level near handles and push plates, especially when normal building movement causes doors to stick.

The Planning Portal sets out the critical areas in the form most homeowners can measure. Safety glazing should be provided on any panel up to 800mm from floor level, within any glazed door up to 1500mm from floor level, and on any side panel to any door up to 300mm from the edge of the door and up to 1500mm from floor level. On a typical entrance with sidelights, that captures almost all of the glass — which is why a period door with original single annealed panes low down is exactly the case the rule was written for.

Front doors are sold in the home more than almost any other building product, and that changes your legal position. Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, an off-premises contract includes a contract concluded in the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer in a place which is not the business premises of the trader. A deal done in your hallway is therefore an off-premises contract, and such contracts normally carry a right to cancel.

The normal cancellation period for a sales contract under those Regulations ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the goods come into the physical possession of the consumer. That is the protection most people have heard of. What far fewer have heard of is regulation 28, headed limits of application: circumstances excluding cancellation, which provides that the cancellation Part does not apply to the supply of goods that are made to the consumer's specifications or are clearly personalised. A door manufactured to the measurements of your opening, in your chosen colour and glazing, is made to your specifications — so the 14-day right you were relying on may never have existed for that order.

None of that makes a survey-and-sign-tonight approach acceptable, it just means the protection has to come from the contract instead of from a cooling-off period. Get the full specification written down before any deposit changes hands: door construction, lock and cylinder, hinges, letter plate, threshold, glazing classification, frame fixings, the colour and the lead time. Separately, the same regulation 28 excludes contracts where the consumer has specifically requested a visit from the trader to carry out urgent repairs or maintenance, so an emergency call-out sits outside the cancellation rules too.

Planning permission and building regulations are separate questions, and a front door is where the planning one bites hardest. The Planning Portal's position is that you do not usually need to apply for planning permission for the insertion of new windows and doors of a similar appearance to those used in the construction of the house. The qualifications matter as much as the rule: a council may have made an Article 4 Direction withdrawing permitted development rights, and if you are a leaseholder you may first need permission from your landlord or management company regardless of what the planning system says.

Listing changes everything. Government planning practice guidance states that any works to demolish any part of a listed building, or to alter or extend it in a way that affects its character as a building of special architectural or historic interest, require listed building consent, irrespective of whether planning permission is also required — and that listed building consent and planning permission are two separate regimes. It also warns that undertaking such works without first obtaining consent is a criminal offence under section 9 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. A front door is almost always part of a listed building's character, so this is not a theoretical risk. There is at least no fee for submitting a listed building consent application.

Designated areas sit between the two. The Planning Portal notes that in a conservation area, national park or area of outstanding natural beauty there may be additional restrictions in place. In practice the local planning authority's conservation team will have a view on panel arrangement, glazing, ironmongery and colour, and asking before you order is far cheaper than asking afterwards. LokalMatch is a straightforward way to start: describe the doorway once, say whether the property is listed or in a conservation area, and door installers covering your postcode contact you directly. The installers pay for the requests they receive; posting one costs a homeowner nothing. LokalMatch does not fit doors, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend any installer, so scheme registration, heritage consents and the written specification remain yours to confirm.

The paperwork is the part of a door replacement that outlives the door. GOV.UK explains that an installer registered with a competent person scheme can self-certify that their work complies with building standards, will notify your local authority on your behalf where needed, and will give you a certificate within 8 weeks of completion which can be used as evidence of compliance — adding that it will also show up in solicitors' searches if you come to sell your home. That last clause is the whole reason the certificate matters.

The schemes carry consumer protection of their own. GOV.UK states that competent person schemes have insurance-backed warranties and complaints procedures if there is a problem with the work, which is a materially different position from a guarantee that depends on one firm staying in business. If your installer belongs to no scheme, the responsibility does not disappear — it moves to you, and the route becomes an application to a building control body, where a full plans application brings a decision within 5 weeks, or 2 months with your consent, and a building notice lets work start 2 days after the notice is submitted.

GOV.UK is equally direct about the downside of skipping it: the person doing the work could be prosecuted and fined if they do not comply with building regulations, the building control body could make you pay to fix faulty work, and without approval you will not have the certificates of compliance you may need when you want to sell your home. Where a replacement door is a controlled fitting, Approved Document L also expects it to be draught-proofed and to meet the limiting standards in its Table 4.2, and building control bodies may accept a Doorset Energy Rating from a certification scheme as evidence — so ask which rating your door carries and keep the document with the deeds.