Landlord Gas Safety Certificate Explained

A landlord gas safety certificate, the CP12, is an annual check on the gas appliances and flues you provide, and a record of it given to your tenants. It is a legal duty rather than good practice, it is due every 12 months, and with us it is £120 including VAT for a standard let property. The check itself covers safe operation, correct combustion, ventilation, the flue and the tightness of the pipework.

The parts that catch landlords out are not the check, they are the edges around it. Which appliances are actually yours to check, what happens when one fails, and two separate deadlines that get confused with each other constantly. We are a Gas Safe registered business based in Bearsted covering Kent, and below is the version that answers those rather than restating the obvious.

Which appliances you are responsible for

The duty covers the gas appliances and flues that you own or provide. It does not extend to an appliance the tenant owns and is entitled to take with them when they leave. If they brought their own gas cooker, that cooker is theirs to look after.

The pipework serving it is still yours, though, and that is the bit people miss. So a tenant's own cooker is outside the check while the installation pipework feeding it stays inside it. This is worth reading carefully, because the official guidance on landlord duties is more specific than the summaries that circulate on letting forums, several of which overstate the duty at the landlord's expense.

What actually happens on the visit

It is more methodical than most people expect, and it is not a long job. The installation is tested for tightness at the meter first, which checks the whole system for leaks before anything gets lit. Then each appliance you provide is worked through in turn, for safe operation, for correct combustion, and for the ventilation it needs to have.

The flue is checked for condition and for whether it is genuinely clearing the products of combustion, which is the test that matters most on an older fire or a back boiler. Then the record is completed and handed over. We issue on the day rather than posting it on later, because a landlord chasing paperwork is a landlord at risk of missing the 28 days below.

What happens if something fails

This is the part nobody plans for, and it is worth knowing before an engineer is stood in the property rather than during. A failure is not one thing. It has three grades, and only two of them stop an appliance being used.

Immediately Dangerous means exactly what it says, and the appliance is disconnected on the spot with permission. At Risk means it is turned off, again with permission, until the fault is put right. Not to Current Standards is the one that surprises people, because the appliance is safe to carry on using and simply gets recorded, usually because standards moved after it was installed.

We have found that the landlords who take this badly are the ones hearing the words for the first time on the day. An engineer cannot leave a dangerous appliance connected, and permission is asked rather than assumed, but if it is refused the situation still gets reported. Knowing that in advance turns an argument into a decision.

The two dates landlords confuse

Two figures attach to this job, they mean completely different things, and they are swapped around constantly, including by people who ought to know better.

The two months is the early renewal window. A check carried out inside it still counts from your original deadline date, so renewing early does not drag your anniversary forward and cost you weeks every year. The 28 days is entirely separate, and it is the deadline for getting the record to an existing tenant. A new tenant has to have it before they move in.

In our experience, booking the check inside the two month window works better than booking it on the anniversary itself, because it still counts from the original date, so you keep your anniversary and you gain a few weeks to put anything right without going over the deadline.

That last point is the practical value of it. If the check throws up a fault on the deadline day, you are out of time. If it throws one up six weeks early, you have six weeks. Records are kept for two years, and it is worth keeping them longer than that because they are the only evidence you have.

What most often fails in a let property

A handful of things come up far more often than the rest, and not one of them is dramatic.

• Ventilation that has been blocked up. A vent gets covered because a tenant felt a draught, and an appliance that needs air to burn safely no longer has it.
• A gas cooker fitted by somebody unregistered, usually between tenancies, and usually on a flexible hose that is the wrong type or badly routed.
• Flue terminals that have been built up against, by a new fence, a shed or an extension that went up without anybody giving the boiler a thought.
• Older gas fires that have never been swept or serviced, which are the most common reason we end up recording something as At Risk.

The first of those is the most instructive, because the tenant did nothing unreasonable at all. They were cold, they blocked a draught, and they had no way of knowing that vent was feeding an appliance. It is worth mentioning ventilation at the start of a tenancy rather than discovering it a year later.

If the tenant will not let you in

It happens, and the law does not treat it as an excuse but it does not expect the impossible either. What is expected is that you take all reasonable steps, and crucially that you can show you took them. Written attempts, dated, repeated, with an explanation of why access is needed.

The practical advice is to keep everything in writing from the first attempt rather than starting a paper trail once it has become a problem. From working with landlords across Kent, the ones who struggle are rarely the ones with difficult tenants. They are the ones who arranged the first three attempts by phone and have nothing to show for them.

It is not a service, and that catches people

A safety check confirms the appliance is safe to use. It does not clean it, tune it or maintain it, and it is not what your boiler warranty depends on. That is a separate piece of work, usually done in the same visit, and it should appear as two items on the paperwork because it is two jobs.

The cost side is simple enough. £120 including VAT covers a standard let property with the record issued on the day. If there are several gas appliances in it, say so when booking and the price is confirmed before anybody comes out rather than after.

So, every 12 months, on the appliances you provide, with the record to the tenant inside 28 days and the renewal booked inside the two month window so your anniversary holds. We cover Maidstone and the rest of Kent from Bearsted and handle repeat visits for landlords with more than one property. To get one booked, get in touch.