Are Cheap Padlocks Any Good | When a £20 Lock Is Fine and When It Isn't

Walk into any Crawley Screwfix, B&Q or Toolstation and you'll find a wall of padlocks ranging from about £4 to well over £100. The cheap ones look the part. They're shiny, they have a reassuring heft, and the packaging usually says something like "hardened steel shackle" in a bold font. So the question is fair: are they actually any good, or is that a marketing decision dressed up as a security one?

The honest answer is: it depends entirely on what you're locking. That's not a hedge, it's the whole point of this post.

The Myth: Price Equals Protection

People assume a padlock costing £20 is roughly half as secure as one costing £40. Security doesn't scale like that. The difference between a £15 padlock and a £60 one isn't 45 quid's worth of incremental protection. It can be the difference between a lock a thief opens with a £3 bolt cutter in four seconds, and one that resists a sustained attack for several minutes with proper tools.

The padlock market has a grading system that makes this measurable. Most people buying padlocks in Bewbush or Broadfield have never heard of it.

CEN Grades: The Number That Actually Matters

The European standard EN 12320 grades padlocks from 1 to 6. Grade 1 is the lowest. Grade 6 is the highest. Here's what the grades broadly test:

A typical £15 to £25 padlock is CEN Grade 1 or 2. That's not a secret, it's just not printed on the front of the packaging in a font anyone notices.

Sold Secure, the independent UK testing body, maps roughly onto this. Their Bronze rating corresponds to CEN Grade 3, Silver to Grade 4, Gold to Grade 5. If a padlock box doesn't mention Sold Secure or CEN Grade, assume it's Grade 1 or 2 until proven otherwise.

Open Shackle vs Closed Shackle: The Other Thing People Get Wrong

Even a high-grade padlock fails if the shackle is exposed. The shackle is the U-shaped bar. On a standard open-shackle padlock, most of that bar is visible when the lock is in use. Bolt cutters love an exposed shackle. It takes seconds.

A closed-shackle or shrouded padlock has a body that covers most of the shackle, leaving very little metal exposed for a tool to grip. The shackle still needs to be hardened steel, but shrouding it removes the easy attack point.

For anything security-critical, you want both: a decent CEN grade and a closed or shrouded shackle. Brands like Abus, Squire, and Abloy make these in various grades. A Squire SS65CS (closed shackle, CEN Grade 5) costs around £55 to £70. That's not a luxury purchase if what's behind the door is worth stealing.

So When Is a Cheap Padlock Fine?

Here's where I'll be direct: plenty of situations genuinely don't need a Grade 4 padlock, and buying one anyway is just spending money.

A cheap padlock earns its place when:

• The gate you're locking opens onto a garden with nothing worth taking behind it
• You're securing a beach locker, a gym bag hook, or a communal post box where the contents have low value
• It's a deterrent-only application, where the casual passer-by moving on is the entire goal
• You're using it temporarily, say, to secure a skip or a site compound for two days

A £10 Masterlock No.3 or a basic ERA padlock from a hardware shop in Three Bridges is perfectly adequate for any of those jobs. Nobody needs to spend £60 locking a gate to an empty communal bin area.

Where a Cheap Padlock Is False Economy

This is where I see the real damage done, usually in Tilgate, Maidenbower and Pound Hill where a lot of houses have detached garages and timber sheds at the back of long gardens.

If your shed contains:

• Power tools worth £500 or more (a single decent SDS drill clears that easily)
• Bicycles, including e-bikes which can be £1,500 to £4,000
• Motorcycle helmets, riding kit, or the bike itself
• Garden machinery, a decent ride-on mower, a generator

...then a Grade 1 padlock on a hasp is not securing those items. It's decorating the door. A thief with a mid-sized bolt cutter opens that shackle without breaking stride.

The calculation is simple. If the contents are worth £1,000, a £60 to £80 closed-shackle, Sold Secure Gold padlock fitted to a proper steel hasp-and-staple (not the pressed-steel stamp that comes with cheap hasps, the coach-bolted type) is a reasonable spend. The padlock alone doesn't do the job either. A Grade 6 padlock on a flimsy hasp screwed with four 25mm wood screws is still a joke.

A Job in Gossops Green That Makes the Point

A few months ago we were called to a Gossops Green property after a shed break-in. The owner had an open-shackle padlock from a supermarket on a lightweight hasp. The thieves hadn't even bothered cutting the shackle. They'd levered the hasp off the door frame with a flathead screwdriver. Took about forty seconds by the look of the damage. Two e-bikes gone.

The replacement setup: a Squire closed-shackle padlock rated Sold Secure Gold, a 6mm steel hasp coach-bolted through the door frame with penny washers on the inside, and a steel security plate over the door edge to prevent lever attacks. Total cost was around £140 for parts and fitting. The e-bikes had cost £2,800 combined and weren't covered by contents insurance because the shed wasn't listed as a secured outbuilding on the policy.

That's the real cost of the wrong padlock.

What to Buy and What to Spend

Quick reference, because this is the bit people actually want:

For the shed and garage category in the Crawley RH10 and RH11 postcode area, Squire, Abus Granit, and Abloy are the brands I'd point people to without hesitation. You'll find them online; Screwfix stocks some Squire and Abus lines in store too.

One last thing: check the hasp. Always. A padlock is only as good as what it's attached to.

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If you're not sure what you've got on your shed or garage, or you've had a break-in and want a proper fix rather than just a like-for-like replacement, Rapid Response covers all of Crawley and the surrounding RH postcodes from Horley down to Haywards Heath. Average arrival under 30 minutes on most jobs. Pricing is given honestly on the call, before anyone turns up.