Landlord gas safety certificates in Macclesfield

The duty comes from the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. A landlord must ensure that every gas appliance, fitting and flue in the property is checked for safety at intervals of no more than twelve months, by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and must keep a record of the check for two years.

There is a useful piece of flexibility most landlords do not know about: a check carried out in the last two months of the current certificate's validity can retain the original expiry date, so booking early does not cost you time on the certificate. There is no reason to leave it to the final week.

The check covers more than the boiler. Every gas appliance in the property, the pipework, the meter installation, and the flues serving each appliance. The engineer verifies gas tightness, that appliances burn correctly, that flues carry products of combustion away, and that ventilation is adequate. Anything unsafe is classified — Immediately Dangerous or At Risk — and dealt with, which may mean an appliance being capped off with the tenant's agreement.

Appliances belonging to the tenant are outside the landlord's duty for the appliance itself, but the pipework and any flue serving it are not, and the landlord's duty to maintain the installation still applies. It is worth being clear about what falls where before the visit.

Carbon monoxide alarms are a separate but related duty. In England, landlords must ensure a carbon monoxide alarm is fitted in any room used as living accommodation which contains a fixed combustion appliance, other than a gas cooker, and must repair or replace alarms reported as faulty.

In practice most landlords have the safety check and the annual boiler service done in the same visit, because the engineer is already there and the two pieces of work overlap. They are not the same thing — the check confirms safety, the service maintains the appliance — but combining them is sensible and usually cheaper.