Gas Safety Week: Your rights to gas safety in rented property

Understanding gas safety when it’s not your responsibility

For day 5 of Gas Safety Week we take a look at gas safety when you’re not the person responsible for ensuring it.

One of the benefits of renting property rather than owning it is that you don’t have to worry about looking after your boiler or gas appliances. Or do you? While of course the responsibility for maintaining gas safety is that of your landlord, it is you who is at risk if that’s not done properly. It is therefore a good idea to familiarise yourself with your rights as a tenant and understand your landlord’s responsibilities to make sure they adhere to them.

When you rent a property there are regulations in place that are designed to keep you safe. Gas appliances carry the risk of carbon monoxide leaks if they’re not working properly so your landlord has an obligation to make sure they’re safe and has to provide evidence that they are in the form of a Landlords’ Gas Safety Certificate, also known as a CP12.

It’s a legal requirement for landlords to have all gas appliances, pipework, chimneys and flues checked annually to make sure the property they’re renting out is safe for you to live in. This will include boilers, gas fires and gas cookers. A copy of this certificate should be provided to you every year when the checks take place (your landlord should provide this within 28 days of a service being carried out) and you should get a current certificate when you move in (if the checks were carried out within the last 12 months they won’t need to be checked again). Only Gas Safe registered heating engineers are able to provide the Landlords’ Gas Safety Certificate.

How to hold your landlord accountable for gas safety

• Make sure you get a CP12 certificate when you move in to the property
• Make a note of the appliance service date on the CP12 so you know when the next one is due
• If it gets close to this date and you haven’t been given notice of a service taking place, remind them. It’s worth noting that there is no ‘grace period’: the certificate must be renewed by the expiry date
• Make sure you get a new CP12 within 28 days
• Inform your landlord if you notice any kind of fault on the boiler, fire or gas cooker/hob and ensure they deal with it quickly
• Make sure there is a carbon monoxide monitor in the property and if not, ask the landlord to provide one. Make sure you replace the batteries as and when required
• If your landlord does not meet their obligations you can report them to the Health & Safety Executive

This blog has been produced as part of our Gas Safety Week 2019 campaign. See more information about Gas Safety Week here or follow the hashtag #GasSafetyWeek.