Emergency lock change (faulty lock) – Is the tenant liable?

Hi, Last Sunday evening, our lock decided to fail (ERA night latch). All of a sudden, the key would not be able to turn the lock. My flatmates, who were inside, could not open the door either, the latch was simply stuck and would not turn despite countless attempts at it.

When it was clear it was not going to work, we sent multiple messages to our landlord explaining the situation (with videos) and tried to call him multiple times to no avail (and about an hour of waiting for a reply).

Given I was locked out of my flat, we called an emergency locksmith. Taking a look at the videos from inside and inspecting outside, he said the lock was faulty and the only option was a destructive opening using a drill. Having done that, he then replaced the lock with a similar one.

When all was done, he charged us £589 for the whole ordeal (emergency, Sunday evening hours, destructive open, new night latch installation). He again inspected the lock and confirmed it was faulty, and wrote this on the invoice too.

We sent over the invoice to our landlord as we assumed the cost for replacing a faulty lock should be his liability, given we hadn’t tempered with it in any way.

He wrote back saying it is the tenant’s liability and that we have no right to incur a cost at his expense.

Who should be paying the fee in this case? (There is no mention of locks in our tenancy agreement).

Thank you,

Quentin