Is your landlord meeting their legal duty when it comes to gas safety

Families renting their property may find a new online resource for landlords on their legal duties when it comes to domestic gas useful.

The site launched by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the National LandLords Association (NLA) aims to help landlords with the action they need to be taking to ensure the safety of their tenants.

Landlords are required by law to arrange for a Gas Safe registered engineer to check all gas appliances and flues within 12 months of their installation.

After this, they need to be checked every 12 months with appropriate maintenance and repairs of appliances, flues and pipework undertaken.

Though landlords are not legally obliged to provide carbon monoxide detectors, 15 people died in the year 2008/09 due to poorly serviced and badly fitted gas appliances.

In Oxfordshire a recent prosecution saw a landlord fined £8000 for not ensuring gas appliances in his rental properties were safe and fit for purpose.

Another recent case saw the jailing of a Cambrigeshire landlord for 16 months for failing to ensure safe gas appliances and producing false gas safety records.

HSE Head of Work Environment, Radiation and Gas Division, Peter Brown said: “Tenants should quite rightly expect that their landlords are taking all necessary steps to ensure that gas appliances are safe.”

The NLA welcome the new web site and one member said: “It’s really useful to have all information in one place, and linked to a list of Gas Safe registered engineers.’  They also commented that it was important that the information comes from a reliable source such as HSE

Visit the new website at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/landlords