Twelve months, every gas appliance in the property, and 28 days to put a copy in the tenant's hand.
A safety certificate is not an opinion about whether the boiler is any good. It is a record that every gas appliance in the property was checked against a fixed list on a fixed date, and that each one either passed or did not.
Every gas appliance the landlord owns, plus the pipework feeding it. On each one: that the gas is burning at the right rate, that the flue is carrying the products of combustion outside, that the ventilation the appliance needs is there and is not blocked, and that the safety devices cut the gas when they are supposed to.
It is not a service. A check records the state of the appliance on the day; a service cleans it and replaces what is worn. The two are often done in the same visit and are frequently sold together, but a certificate on its own guarantees nothing about next winter.
It also does not cover the tenant’s own appliances, or anything electric. A landlord’s duty stops at the appliances the landlord owns.
The 28 days is the part that catches people out, and it runs from the check, not from the tenancy.
Every twelve months, and a copy to the existing tenant inside 28 days of the check. A new tenant gets a copy before they move in. Records are kept for two years.
A check done in the last two months of the certificate keeps the original anniversary date, so having it done early does not shorten the next cycle. Leaving it late does move the date, and that is how portfolios drift out of step.
The engineer records the fault and its category, and if it is unsafe the gas is turned off at that appliance with the tenant’s permission and a warning notice is left on it. The property is not condemned and the rest of the gas is not affected.
What follows is a repair and a re-check. Nothing on the certificate obliges anybody to replace an appliance that can be repaired.
Those four together are the whole evidence trail, and they are what gets asked for when something goes wrong. A certificate with no proof of delivery is half a record.
In this article
Portfolio to keep in step?
We hold the dates and book the checks before they run out, so the anniversary never moves. One property or forty.
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