Extra flexibility for landlords’ gas safety checks

Gas safety regulations place duties on landlords to ensure gas appliances, fittings and flues provided for tenants’ use are safe. Part of this includes making sure that an annual safety check is carried out on each gas appliance or flue and that tenants are issued with a copy of the latest safety check record.

Originally the regulations required landlords to carry out gas safety checks “at intervals of no more than 12 months since it was last checked for safety”, this lead to a situation where in order to ensure continuity and avoid issues with access to properties landlords were starting the inspection process at around 10.5 months after the last check. This was found to be significantly shortening the safety check cycle potentially imposing additional costs, for example in a 9 year period a property could receive 10 safety checks.

The regulations have now been amended to introduce a degree of flexibility to the timing of annual gas safety checks. Under the new amendment if the safety check is carried out in the two months before the due date the existing expiry date can be retained.

The HSE have also updated their guidance documents to reflect these changes.

The updated approved code of practice can be downloaded at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/l56.pdf and the Guide to landlords’ duties can be downloaded at:  http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg285.pdf