Gas safety check is one of the most important responsibilities for a private landlord. It is also by law that every landlord must obtain a gas safety certificate every year. If you are a tenant, it's also your responsibility to ensure that your landlord has a gas safe checked in the rented property you are moving in. The annual gas safety check has to be carried out by A Gas Safe Registered Engineer. If you have any doubt on the gas safe engineer, you can always ask their ID number.
To ensure your tenant safety in your rented property, all gas appliances and flues need to be examined in an annual gas safety check and of course, this must be done by a Gas Safe Registered Engineer. Once this has been done, he or she will provide a landlord gas safety record (gas safety certificate) with details of all the checks that have been carried out. Sometimes, this type of certificate is also called CP12 gas safety certificate.
After the gas safety check, by law, you will need to provide a copy of the gas safety check certificate to your tenant(s) within 28 days and for the new tenant(s), you will need to provide this at the start of their tenancy. Without any check or trying to cut corners of gas safety checks in your rented properties can lead to a serious impact.
What does the Gas Safety Check involve?
An annual gas safety check involves a Gas Safety Registered Engineer (heating engineer) visiting the property to inspect the gas appliances such as the oven, hobs and the systems like boilers and cylinders. Any gas appliance can produce carbon monoxide (CO), a very poisonous gas which it leaks when natural gas or liquid petroleum gas (LPG) does not burn properly. Therefore, it is extremely important to get all your gas appliances checked by a gas safety registered engineer. The basic checks involves:
A check of all gas appliances, ensuring all the appliances connect to the gas pipes correctly and properly set up
Carrying out the gas pipework tested for leaking.
Record the gas rate and burner pressure.
Check the pressure vessel inside the boiler and flue system.
In a more complicated situation, your gas safety registered engineer might make additional or different inspections. Because requirements vary depending on the appliances and models too. By law, the gas safety registered engineer will give a Gas Safety record to you and it should be within 24 hours after the inspection.
If you found this FAQs useful, I’d be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Linkedin or Facebook. Simply click the social icons below. Thank you!