School lockdown systems
A lockdown that is a decision made from a phone, rather than a caretaker running the site with a bunch of keys.
Most school lockdown plans depend on people running
Read your own procedure and count how many steps involve somebody physically getting somewhere.
The typical plan says: the head or a nominated deputy decides, the office sounds something, and staff secure their own rooms. In practice the decision-maker is often the person dealing with the incident, the office may be the part of the site affected, and the external doors stay unlocked because locking them means walking to them.
Access control changes the mechanism rather than the plan. The doors that should secure, secure — from a phone, from a browser, or from a button under the reception desk — and the people who need to know are told at the same moment.
It does not replace the procedure, the training or the judgement. It removes the running.
Verkada Emergency Scenarios
Verkada models these on the Standard Response Protocol, which is what most UK school plans have converged on anyway.
Five scenarios
Hold, Secure, Lockdown, Evacuate and Shelter. For each you decide which doors lock, which unlock, and who is notified.
Notification-only is allowed
A scenario can alert people without touching a door — useful for Hold, where you want corridors clear but nothing locked.
Five ways to trigger
Verkada Command in a browser, the Command mobile app, the Verkada Pass app, a wired button, or the API.
Seconds, not minutes
Verkada states scenarios take effect within seconds when triggered from a wired button or from Pass.
Locking doors is a fire-safety decision first
If you read nothing else on this page, read this.
Every locking arrangement has to work with your fire strategy and your means of escape. Locks release on fire alarm activation. Emergency door releases and green break-glass units stay where the fire risk assessment puts them. Doors on an escape route are not locked in the direction of escape, whatever a lockdown plan says.
A lockdown requirement and a fire evacuation requirement can point in opposite directions on the same door. Resolving that needs someone who understands both, working with your fire risk assessor, and it is a large part of why we think this work belongs with an electrical contractor that also installs fire systems rather than with a security-only supplier.
If a company proposes locking arrangements for your school without asking about your fire strategy, that is a reason to stop the conversation.
Telling the adults, securing the doors, reaching the room
Telling the adults — Cosafe
Any member of staff raises it from where they are. Every adult in the groups you configure is alerted in seconds with the action for their role, and leadership sees live who has responded. The platform.
Securing the doors — Verkada
Locks and unlocks the doors you nominate, in seconds, from a phone, a browser, a wired button or a Pass card. Free egress from the inside on every one of them.
Reaching the room — voice
A spoken instruction in every room is a voice-alarm or PA system. Most schools already have one, and where the drill shows a gap we specify and install it from our fire and life-safety side.
Designed as one thing
Because we do all three, the alert, the doors and the announcement are designed together against the same fire strategy, by the same engineers, on one certificate.
The order that saves money
Run the communication drill first. It shows you which of the three you are actually missing, and most schools are surprised by the answer.
Nothing here is a legal deadline
The duties have not commenced and the SIA expects spring 2027. The reason to do it now is that it takes a term to do properly. What is in force today.
How a lockdown capability actually gets built
- 1
Read the existing plan
We start from your procedure, not from a template.
- 2
Walk the site with the fire strategy
Which doors can be locked, which cannot, and what releases on alarm.
- 3
Agree the scenarios
Which doors, who is notified, who can trigger it, and how it is released.
- 4
Install and interface
Controllers, readers and door hardware by our engineers, with the fire interface tested.
- 5
Train the people who trigger it
A short session, and a written one-pager by the phone.
- 6
Drill it
Within the first term, and then annually. Every trigger and release is logged, so the drill evidences itself.
The door is the system. Everything else is how you reach it
A lockdown is won or lost at the door, and the door is usually the weakest part of the plan — a mortice lock, a key on a hook in the office, and somebody expected to walk a corridor to use it while the corridor is the problem.
- Wireless locks on existing doors. Battery-powered Schlage locks fit to the doors you already have, so a classroom block is not a rewiring project.
- One action, many doors. An Emergency Scenario from a phone or the office holds a wing, a floor or the whole site. Verkada documents this acting within seconds.
- Free egress is not negotiable. Every door still opens from the inside. We design to BS 7273-4 and the fire strategy, and we will not fit anything that traps people.
- The record writes itself. Who triggered it, when, which doors, and how long — the evidence a governing body will ask for after a drill.
Questions we get asked
Can a teacher trigger a lockdown?
What about the classrooms?
Does it work if the internet is down?
Can we practise without alarming everyone?
Sources
Everything on this page is taken from these. Checked 25 September 2026.
Start with a survey, not a quotation.
We walk the site, look at what you already have, and tell you what would genuinely help — including where the answer is that you do not need anything.
Book a free site survey Call 01727 822 833Tell us about the site
Send us a few details and an engineer — not a call centre — will come back to you within one working day.
This is not a monitoring centre
If you are dealing with an incident now, call 999. This line is monitored during office hours.