If you are a landlord you are fully responsible for ensuring that you have the relevant and updated certificates in place for gas and electrical testing and that the right testing is carried out regularly.

For a while it has been a legal requirement to provide a Gas Safety Certificate (CP12 form) that shows that all gas appliances in the property have been tested and are safe to use, and this needs to be performed every year.

New regulations coming into force from 1 June this year (subject to final approval by both Houses of Parliament) mean that landlords and agents will need to ensure electrical installation inspections and testing must be carried out by a Part-P qualified electrician for all new tenancies in England from 1 July 2020 or 1 April 2021 for existing tenancies.

What does this mean?

The Regulations now require landlords to ensure that every fixed electrical installation is inspected and tested every five years. This has been advised for a while now so should not be news, it just means if you haven’t recently had an electrical inspection, then you are now legally required to.

Further details about this can be found on the Gov.uk website 

Be warned, proven breaches of the regulations can result in the local housing authority imposing a financial penalty of up to £30,000.

Is this the same as an EICR?

In short, yes. An EICR (Electrical Inspection Certificate Report) is provided when a qualified electrician performs a complete electrical check of your property’s wiring and electrical equipment. Lots of landlords and homeowners have already had EICR checks carried out, if you haven’t its worth getting in touch with a qualified electrician to do so.

Do I need gas and electrical certification when I sell my property?

If you rent your property out, you have a duty of care to your tenants to provide gas and electrical certification, however, there is no legal duty to provide either gas or electrical certification to the buyer of your property, if they want to get checks done, that is up to them. We can help with these just give us a call.

Aside from gas and electrical certification, what other certifications do I need to provide as a landlord?

 As we are aware there are four other critical certifications you will need particularly if you have a large communal property or and HMO (house of multiple occupation)

These include, an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), Fire safety checks, Legionella risk assessment and Deposit Protection Paperwork.

As well as providing gas and electrical certification, we can also help with an EPC, if you need advice on the others it’s always worth checking with industry bodies.

Finally, please make sure that any inspections are carried out by fully qualified tradesmen, for both gas (Gas Safe approved) and electrics (NICEIC approved).

Here at Gregor Heating we have teams of qualified gas and electrical engineers and can help you with these services if you’d like to book in a consultation please give us a call.

We will also be at Landlord Expo on 26 November 2020 in Bristol so if you want to chat to our team, please pop by.

Stay safe!