The gas safety lapse that left a landlord exposed

What if a Landlord remembers or is reminded by his diary that a Gas safety Check is due in a week’s time, and tries to arrange for an inspection with his GAS Safe Engineer, but the tenant says he or she will not be home for the whole week, and does not permit landlord or the Engineer to visit in their absence, besides no landlord should visit a property when a tenant is not in, without explicit permission, so that meant the gas safe inspection could only be carried out once the tenant returns, and this can create a gap when technically there is not a valid gas safe certificate for a few days, how can the landlord be held responsible for this gap?

A tenant who went straight to the council rather than a friendly prompt to the landlord is one that should be recieving a Section 21 pronto!

The tenants going straight to the Council instead of having a chat with the landlord is likely the result of years of deliberate Government anti landlord propaganda and public brainwashing to demonise landlords and weaponise tenants against landlords. There’s been a massive government psy op to get the public to see all landlords as “rogues” and all tenants as exploited “victims”. Proxy forces such as fake charities like Shelter have also been used. The RRB is one step further to eventually drive all independent landlords out of the PRS and hand the sector over to wealth management companies such as Blackrock.

Every year I have this dance of trying to arrange a service date between the gas engineer and tenant. I don’t think one has been completed on time yet. Mainly because tenant is not availble or on holiday. This is documented ‘just in case’

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 03/11/2025 – 16:54
Get rid of this person while you still can. A tenant who wilfully makes it difficult for a landlord to visit and check the property is safe does not deserve to live in such a valuable asset. How stupid, to block professionals from doing a service and safety check of the very appliances that warm and provide hot water for this person’s own residence!

It’s the same with so-called “damp and mould”. The vast majority of this is condensation mould because the tenant insists on keeping the windows closed, never ventilates their home, dries clothes on radiators, and so on, rather than go to the effort of using a washing line or tumble drier. It’s bone-idleness and ignorance. Of course landlords should be kind and try and guide tenants on how a house is meant to be used – yes, the windows are meant to be opened, no, don’t sellotape over trickle vents – but to make landlords responsible for the ramifications of the tenants’ own behaviour is deeply unfair and ridiculous.

Reply to the comment left by AnthonyJames at 03/11/2025 – 17:39
No, he doesn’t willfully block the gas service , he is always away with this job or on holiday. Tenant has been with me 20+ years and never misses a payment.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 03/11/2025 – 11:01
That’s what my tenant is doing. I issued her a S21 after the damage she’d caused to the property and her constant lies and tantrums. She wouldn’t let the gas safety engineer in to do his job. She went to thr Council for help and they decided even before the last certificate expired that the s21 was void because of the gas safety lapse. And the tenant very conveniently claims her child has contracted a contagious disease so.she refuses to let anyone in on grounds of health and safety when previously she said the child was no longer contagious. After her many lies I’m no longer inclined to believe her stories.

Landlords have to brace themselves for a whole lot more of these shenanigans. Gas safety engineers want the work but are terrified of being held accountable for any accidents, therefore they condemn boilers that are in good working order creating huge expense for the landlord’s. We are all compliant with carbon monoxide alarms, surely these are to alert users to a problem. I’ve had gas cookers, boilers, gas fires condemned even though alarms have not been triggered. Can’t help but feel this is a way of generating business for the engineers. Why does a 12 month old boiler needs an expensive check when other fail saves are in place? Most home owners don’t have their boilers safety checked yearly.

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 03/11/2025 – 19:16
Maybe.
As its only about £90 for a gas dafe you voluntarily shorten the time between visits to day 9 months. Then you get flex.
Also you make it sound that T is reasonable. Ask them 4 months out what dates suit. Find a Gas Safe engineer who can deliver date specified by T.
I think a tad of Omdenken is called for.

Reply to the comment left by EL1111 at 05/11/2025 – 15:59
Isn’t it funny, in my own house I had a Vaillant VCW 221 installed in 1994, so 31 years later it is still running like a new steam engine, just had some minor problem with hot water which turned out to be a torn diapghram in its water valve, cost under £5 for a new one and I managed to replace it myself. Whilst at it I also checked its servo valve and opened it all up and cleaned and refitted, works like a new,

Now this will make many Gas safe Engineers faint and very upset, my radiators were installed in 1976, none have rusted, none have ever needed taking air out, none needed power flushing, and on top of this my own boiler does not get serviced regularly but only when it develops a fault,

Todays boilers pack up in less than 5 years, and require unblocking heat exchangers, or taking out air from rads, rads not heating properly,

Further more I run my heating constantly On 24/7 at a flow temperature of 40C setting 3 out of 10, this heats my house to 22C or more when outside temperature is around 15C, comes very cold weather like 1C or zero degrees I turn it up to setting 5 which gives a flow temperature of 50C and keeps the house around 20-21C warm 24/7 , yes it works on cycling On and Off like it will fire for about 12 seconds and the flames will be barely visible, like half inch tall, then go off for about 60 seconds and so on and has done so for the past 10 years like that, from October to April each year,

it does not save money in bills or is about the same cost as using a timer and then you have to use very hot flow temperature of like 70C, that can negate the advantage of constant use, besides very hot flow temperature can scald children,

Todays condensing boilers require yearly service due to sludge build up and they don’t run as low as 30C Flow temperature. I have no intention of changing my boiler fro another 10 years, I have stocked up spares for it.