Landlords have a legal responsibility, according to the HSE, to ensure the ‘safety of your tenants’. It is a requirement then to ensure boilers are serviced annually and that everything (flues, pipes and appliances) are in good conditions. It is also a necessity for landlords to ensure any repair work noticed by inspection or reported by the tenants is carried out as soon as possible.
What is an annual service?
An annual service is exactly what you’d expect. It is a thorough check of all gas appliances and flues within the property and should be carried out once every year. Checks should ensure that the fumes can leave the property and the flues are clear and that appliances can operate safely. If faults are found then they need to be recorded and action should be taken to fix these.
Who should carry out maintenance work?
All maintenance work should be carried out by a central heating engineer. It is the landlord’s responsibility to find an engineer and ensure they are Gas Safe registered. Gas Safe is the governing body for gas engineers and anyone wanting to work in the industry must be officially approved and listed on their register.
When looking for a registered engineer you can simply go straight to their website and do a postcode search to find approved engineers in your area. Alternatively if you have already sought a business/engineer from word of mouth or by looking at reviews, you can check their status by a quick search on the Gas Safe website.
Proof of inspection
After the inspection your engineer will produce a Gas Safe certificate that will record the findings from the inspection and will list the details of the service. Despite having checks annually as a landlord you are required to keep records for a minimum for 2 years.
The Gas Safety certificate needs to be with the tenants of the property. Should the service be done while existing tenants live at the property, the certificate must be given to them within 28 days of it being carried out. If the property is vacant, checks still need to be carried out annually and when a tenant does move in they should be given the certificate instantly.
Repairs
If the service highlights any faults these will need to be dealt with accordingly. The engineer will ensure the faulty appliances are safely disconnected and it will then be the landlord’s job to have them repaired. The tenancy agreement should highlight who is responsible for faults and duty lies with the landlord.
