An existing property owner client asked us to look at the office insurance of an accountancy company which occupied part of his building and of which he was a director. We visited the premises and found non compliance with the prescriptive security requirements of the current office contents policy: there were no window locks at ground floor level, the back door was not fitted with the required 5 lever mortice lock and there was an internal first floor door fitted with a push bar release mechanism allowing the door to be used to access other parts of the building in the event of fire. The policy required all exits from the office to have 5 lever locks unless they were designated fire escapes by the local fire authority, although this door was used as a fire escape, the property had never been visited by the fire authority, so the door was not designated a fire escape by the fire authority. We looked at other office package policies but as expected, found that they all required prescriptive security similar to the current policy. We were able to arrange a policy at around £500 annual premium with the same insurer that covered the building for the property owner on the understanding that the missing locks would be fitted and that their surveyor would visit the premises to inspect the internal door. We attended the survey and it was agreed that the internal door was acceptable without a 5 lever lock. The surveyor’s report went back to the department issuing the policy, however the system on which the policy records were held did not allow for the policy being endorsed to amend the prescriptive security requirement. There then followed a series of exchanges between ourselves and insurers, 3 months later a letter was finally issued by insurers to manually override the security requirement on the internal door. The work involved in arranging the policy correctly was totally disproportionate to the premium level, such experience is not however unusual on this type of packaged policy, hence our reluctance to become involved.