Under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, as a landlord you must ensure the safety of all gas appliances, flues, chimneys (and other related fittings, accessible to your tenants. This extends to a range of dwellings including hotels and other styles of accommodation in this category, holiday lets and rental properties.
There are 3 fundamental things you must ensure (by law) when it comes to providing properties with gas appliances:
- Upkeep: You have a requirement to keep you stacks, chimneys, flue, gas pipework and appliances in safe working order. The servicing of your gas appliances must occur in line with the recommendations provided by their respective manufacturers. Should you be unable to access these details you must revert to annual check-ups and servicing, unless you’ve been advised differently by a Gas Safe registered engineer. Even if you (as the landlord) are not the owner of a gas-related appliance and your tenant is, as long as it’s connected to the pipework or flue, you remain responsible. Only in instances where this is not the case, and most importantly the tenant is the owner of the apparatus in question, does the liability fall on them.
- Gas Safety Inspections: A Gas Safe registered engineer has to check the safety of your gas appliances and flues on an annual basis. As a landlord, guidelines introduced in April 2018 grant you permission to have a gas safety check conducted every 10-12 months following the previous review, with the expiry date of your valid existing report remaining intact. Should you be late on having a check done, this is not good as you’re technically breaking the law and the consequences of something going wrong can be extremely heavy. However, the annual clock for getting your next Gas Safety check (i.e. in 10-12 months) is reset.
- Report: A recorded report of your annual gas safety inspections need to be provided to your tenants in a 28-day period, or instantly if it’s someone commencing a new tenancy at your property. If the space that your letting is for a period of less than 28-days, you must make the gas safety report fully visible in a central space of your property. All gas safety reports must be retained for a minimum of 2 years, and should you fall under the new regulations for flexible gas safety inspections, your report must be stored until a further 2 gas safety reviews are conducted.
Beyond these recommendations, you should also go and notify your tenants where the mechanism for switching off the gas to the premises is located. This should hopefully keep them safe if and when an emergency arises.
Again, we must stress for you to utilise a Gas Safe registered engineer, like those here at PHG Mechanical Services. Anything short of this is unlawful, and you put your tenants in danger should you not comply with these recommendations.
