Safety laws should be applied to ALL property owners

Mark, I agree but who of course is pushing this regulation? Gas safe et al…, vested interests. Who has to do the gas check – gas safe engineers. Who has to do the elec check? Registered elec engineers … I won’t go on!!

I think the point is that with rental property the control of the house or flat etc including safety issues is out with the control of the tenant and rests with the Landlord as owner of the property. Similarly with an owner occupied property responsibilities reside with the owner, and may be successive Government have considered O/O have shown they are more likely to accept responsibility for all issues which protect them and their dependants.

By contrast in the past some Landlords adopted a cavalier attitude to their responsibilities especially gas safety where tenants died from carbon monoxide poisoning leading to the introduction of the Gas Safety(Installation & Use) Regulations applied specifically to the PRS. Electrical Safety Regulations come within Part P of the Building Regulations and apply to all properties regardless of ownership and useage which is just as well because 70% of all house fires are caused by faulty electrics.

If I am a single man living in a property with no children, should I be forced to spend funds on an gas certificate every 12 months? wouldn’t a detector be of better use for me – if i want to take the “risk” ?

This applies to main residences or holiday homes too where I spend a few week a year?

The trouble is Mark, these regulations are their to prop up the service providers with regular income.

A landlord is required as a service provider to provide a safe environment, if a property owner does not want to provide themselves with a safe environment that’s up to them.

I’d argue the current regulations should be removed and the onus being on the landlord to provide safe housing, via detectors or certificates their choice and not that of bureaucracy enforced by fines.

Where governments regulate everything, the same rules that governments make and enforce become crutches. Landlord can work barely well enough to satisfy the rules. But what if the rules aren’t enough? Too bad. The person who suffered bad burns in the fire, have no case. As long as the landlord had a certificate, the law often can’t touch them.

Im in favor in less regulation that wont hinder innovation and “better than” them rather than me too regulation.

I can understand that a greater emphasise is put on rented properties because they likely are at a greater risk of both damage and lack of maintenance.

However, personally I’d be against legislation obliging me to test gas and electrics (it starts there but then what else could be added…) every year or so at home.
Especially for electrics I think this is pointless and just a mix of over the top H&S and subsidised job creation.

For gas, compulsory gas and CO detectors would probably reap 95% of the benefits for 1% of the cost (enforcement would always be difficult, though).

In any case, whatever could be made compulsory, how do you check and enforce it?
The only effective answer, IMHO, is a register maintained and enforced by e.g. local councils. I.e. another massive councils jobs creation and related expense.

I would love to see some stats on deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning and electricution as a percentage of inhabitants of rented vs owner occupied properties. Do they exist and if so where can I obtain them from?
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In my opinion all properties that have gas should have an annual safety inspection. What is the point of landlords having their systems checked when the house next door or the flat below could have a gas leak or worse? A gas explosion would take out joining properties.

GasSafe have a great new tool on their website which enables anyone to feed in a post code and see any incidents that have taken place in neighbouring properties or in fact in a property you might be considering buying. Its here http://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/ and its called Gas Map. When I checked out some of the areas around my rented properties it confirmed that there is a very real danger from those that are not checked regularly.

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Reply to the comment left by “Mary Latham” at “07/04/2014 – 12:04“:

Just sent off to Amazon for your book Mary . Looking forward to reading.

Thank you Jan please let me know what you think.

Safety checks and certificates should apply to all properties regardless of being rented or owned. Perhaps the idea of an occupancy permit before a change of occupiers is the best way to go? Whenever there is a change in occupation of a property, a new occupancy permit must be issued. Under the occupancy permit, electrics, gas, water supply, appliances, standard of occupation could be checked by Environmental Health. Any property failing to receive an occupancy permit remains uninhabited=no rental income. Properties lived in by owners will be motivated to bring their props up to standard.

I have always thought that all properties who have gas should have an annual inspection and boiler servicing when required – anything which is a ‘machine’ needs maintenance and these combi boilers in particular tend to be delicate beasts who need some TLC from time to time.

I have two flats in the same building where the freeholder, Wandsworth Council, changed the heating and hot water system from a large boiler for the whole block to individual combi boilers for each flat. As my properties are rented out they have benefitted from the annual gas inspection – so far I have had a huge problem in one boiler flue with condense deposits after five years which would not have been evident to a resident but could have been very dangerous and in the other flat the valves kept leaking so the whole boiler has been overhauled. However any resident leaseholder in the same block would not necessarily have had any checks done. I have alerted Wandsworth Council to this saying that perhaps they should at least advise everyone in the block to check their gas installations for the safety of everyone and it should be, of course, in the interests of the freeholder.