Industry Spotlight: Landlords

Understanding your landlord obligations can be tricky as they cover things like condition and repairs, paperwork, administration and safety.

 

In this industry spotlight, we will briefly cover landlord’s duties on certain safety topics in residential properties.

Landlord’s specific safety duties relate to:

• Gas safety
• Electrical safety
• Fire safety
• Safety from Legionella

Gas safety

Gas supplies must be installed and maintained by a Gas Safe registered engineer to ensure they are continually safe to use.
Using a Gas Safe registered engineer gives you the reassurance that they are competent and qualified to work safely and legally with gas.

Checks on gas appliances and flues must be carried out every 12 months.
This is to ensure that they remain safe to use. If a tenant has supplied their own gas appliance, you are not responsible for its maintenance but must ensure that the gas pipework is safe.

Landlords must have up-to-date gas safety records.
These are sometimes referred to as gas safety certificates and must be kept for 2 years.
A GasSafe registered engineer will issue a gas safety certificate when they have fitted or serviced an appliance, a copy of which should be issued to tenants when they move in or within 28 days of the safety checks.

Electrical safety

All appliances provided to tenants, no matter how small, must carry the ‘CE’ marking.
This shows that the item meets EU requirements for safety.

Electrical installations must be safe when the tenants move in and must be maintained
throughout the course of their tenancy.
This includes wiring, sockets, light fittings, kitchen appliances and washing machines, etc.

It’s recommended that electrical tests are carried out at least every 5 years or on change of tenancy.

An Electrical Installation Condition Report will be issued by a registered electrician upon successful inspection of the electrical installations in the property. This is also known as a ‘periodic inspection’ and is sometimes referred to as an ‘electrical safety certificate’ or a ‘fixed wiring inspection certificate’.
This report should be supplied to tenants on request.

Fire safety

To help ensure that a property is safe for the tenants to live in, the (Fire Safety Order 2005 (FSO)), places certain legal obligations and duties on the responsible person.

One of these duties is to ensure that a fire risk assessment is undertaken in all common areas of the property, including shared hallways and corridors, stairways and entrances/exits.

The ‘Responsible person’ is “the person who has control of the premises in connection with the carrying on of a trade, business or other undertaking”.
In practice this will usually be the landlord, but in the case of absentee landlords where the “carrying on of the business” is undertaken by a managing agent, it may be the managing agent.

An individual fire risk assessment must be carried out on each property that is NOT a single private dwelling. For help in determining if your property is subject to the FSO and therefore requires a fire risk assessment, please contact us.

The risk assessment should comprise of 5 key stages:

1. Identify the fire risks (e.g. furnishings, blocked stairways or faulty electrics).
2. Consider who is at risk (e.g. the tenants and their visitors).
3. Implement appropriate control measures (e.g. improving escape routes, installing smoke detectors, alarms, etc.).
4. Record the findings of the risk assessment.
5. Review and update the risk assessment regularly (e.g. when a new tenant moves in or if the building is altered in any way etc.)

Landlords should also use appropriate fire safety signage to help tenants know what to do in case of fire. This includes signs indicating the location of fire exits, assembly points, fire alarms, extinguishers and any other fire-fighting equipment.

Signage must be clear and understandable by everyone living in the building.

Place a Fire Action Notice detailing the actions to be taken in case of fire in a common part of the building, such as the entrance hall.

Fire-fighting equipment: In order to provide a facility for extinguishing small fires in their early stages, a simple multi-purpose extinguisher is recommended on each floor in the common parts of HMOs and buildings containing flats. It will not usually be practical to train tenants in the use of these, but basic advice should be offered at the start of each new tenancy.

Safety from Legionella

You have a legal duty to ensure all water systems are correctly operated and maintained so as to control legionella bacteria.

In a property, legionella bacteria may be found in any water system between 20-45°c, such as hot/cold water tanks, pipework and air conditioning units. The risk can be lowered if hot water is kept hot, cold water is kept cold and if the water is kept free of impurities, i.e. it is used regularly to keep it fresh and prevent stagnation.

To help keep your tenants (and their visitors) safe from harm, you must undertake a legionella risk assessment, where there is a risk of legionella.

As with any other form of risk assessment, this will comprise of 5 key steps:

1. Identify the risks (e.g. check water temperatures).
2. Consider who is at risk (e.g. the tenants and their visitors).
3. Implement appropriate control measures (e.g. keeping water hot and removing impurities etc.).
4. Record the findings of the risk assessment.
5. Review and update the risk assessment regularly (e.g. annually or if changes are made to the water system of the property).

Samuel Nesbitt, Consultant