New flexibility for landlord annual gas safety checks

New flexibility for landlord annual gas safety checks

15:30 PM, 5th April 2018, About 6 years ago 5

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Following campaigning work by the Scottish Association of Landlords (SAL) and their England/Wales partners the RLA, the SAL are pleased to announce a good result.

From 6 April 2018 a change in gas safety regulations will introduce a degree of flexibility to the timing of landlords’ annual gas safety checks. This MOT-style change means that landlords can carry out the annual gas safety check in the two months before the due date and retain the existing expiry date.

For example, if the current certificate expires on 25 November 2018, a new certificate issued on/after 26 September 2018 will be valid for up to 14 months, expiring on 25 November 2019.

This avoids landlords waiting until the last minute and not gaining access, or having to shorten the annual check cycle to comply with the law.


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Comments

Mike

10:52 AM, 6th April 2018, About 6 years ago

Like all things electro/mechanically controlled, A boiler can also go wrong and become dangerous even if it has been checked over soon after, or it may become dangerous perhaps two months before the expiry date of its current certificate, so having a safety certificate does not mean a boiler is actually safe, lives could still be lost, and so forth, by this argument a boiler does not become dangerous the very next day a certificate expires.
Many people now get road tax online, where you do not need to pull out your paper MOT test certificate, as DVLA computers can check whether on not you have a valid Certificate of insurance and MOT, so this means many drivers don't realise when their MOT certificate ends, assuming the date of renewing a road tax is earlier than the date of expiry of your MOT cert. I have been many times caught where I have not realised that my MOT |Certificate has actually expired, and I guess the same could be true for many landlords not realising that their gas safe certificate has also expired. In todays world we need constant setting up of reminders. Nearly every day you need to renew something or the other, if it is not your passport, it may be your driving license, or it may be property license, gas certificate, electrical test,. EPC, oh the stress of modern living!

Annie Landlord

11:38 AM, 6th April 2018, About 6 years ago

Which is why we have alerts, diary entries, calendar entries etc:) There is no real excuse for missing something as important as a gas cert renewal

Recardo

15:07 PM, 6th April 2018, About 6 years ago

Hardly makes any difference at all, put it on my calendar and book it a month early. My tenants have Gas certs, electric certificates, carbon monoxide and smoke alarms, and they may not even change the batteries or test them.
What is more important is more important is that my tenants have a gas safe engineer's phone and my permission to call them out if there is any heating or plumbing problems. If called out for no reason they know they will get the call out charge.
as previous poster says it,s like an MOT only good on the day of testing.
I have only ever had a smoke alarm on they houses I have lived in, and any problems with any thing else from fences to roofs, boilers and electrics, any prob;em and i get it fixed.
Since all tenants know they can call me for any household faults I don't think all the paperwork is needed. They do have more rights than me!

John Frith

11:54 AM, 7th April 2018, About 6 years ago

Begs the question of how the gas engineer will know when the current cert expires (assuming it was done by a different person).
Is there a central register for them to find out?
If so, has it been running for the past year to smooth the transition?

Ingrid Bacsa

16:51 PM, 14th October 2018, About 6 years ago

hope they follow suit here.

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