Landlord gas safety records: the rules and a renewal system

An illustrative email, the kind that turns up in the third week of August: “Hi, just back from holiday. I think the gas certificate on the flat ran out last week. Can you do it tomorrow? The tenant’s a nurse and works nights.” You can probably squeeze it in. But a landlord who had heard from you in June would never have needed to ask. Gas safety records are some of the most predictable work in the trade. The date is on last year’s record. Here is how to make that date work for you.

The rules, exactly

You know these, but landlords often half-know them, and it helps to quote them back accurately. All of this sits in regulation 36 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, which apply in Great Britain. Northern Ireland has its own regulations.

Two of those catch people out. First, record keeping. Since April 2018 the regulation says the landlord keeps each record until there have been two further checks of that appliance or flue (or for two years after the last check, if the appliance has been taken out). HSE’s own guidance shortens this to “keep a record for 2 years”, which is what most landlords have heard.

Second, the two-month window in regulation 36A. If a check is completed within the two months ending on the deadline date, it is treated as if it had been done on the deadline date. So a flat due on 30 November can be checked any time from early October and still be due next 30 November. Check it in August and the date moves forward for good. That window is the whole basis of the renewal system below.

The record itself has a list of required contents in regulation 36(3)(c), including the date, the address, the landlord’s (or their representative’s) name and address, each appliance checked, any defect and remedial action, and your name, signature and registration number. Rules get amended, so check the current text on legislation.gov.uk before you rely on any summary, this one included.

Landlords are repeat customers

A homeowner might call you once every few years. A landlord with four flats has a legal reason to call you four times a year, every year, and probably needs the boiler looked at in between. A letting or managing company might have dozens. That makes them your steadiest customers, as long as you keep them.

Who you deal with matters. HSE says the contract between a landlord and a managing company should spell out who arranges the checks. If that company has taken the job on, the same duties apply to them. In practice, ask once, in writing: “Who should I send the reminder and the record to?” Then write the answer on the job.

The renewal list

One list, one row per property. A spreadsheet or the notes app on your phone will do. What matters is that every row has a deadline date, not just “did it last October”.

Sort it by deadline. Every Monday, look at the next ten weeks. Anything hitting its eight-week mark gets a message that day. That gives the landlord a week or two to reply and still lets you book well inside the window. Here is a message that works:

That last question saves you the most time. Getting permission to contact the tenant yourself turns a three-way chain of messages into one call. When the check is done, send the record to whoever the landlord named and note the date. The landlord is the one who must get a copy to existing tenants within 28 days, but it helps them if you remind them in the same message.

When the tenant won’t open the door

Sometimes the tenant cancels, ignores calls or says no. The law doesn’t expect the impossible. Under regulation 39, a landlord isn’t guilty of an offence under regulation 36 if they can show they took all reasonable steps. HSE’s landlord guidance says force must not be used, and recommends steps the landlord should keep a record of:

HSE says its inspectors will look for repeated attempts, and one of its answers says at least three. It also says it would ultimately be for a court to decide whether the steps were reasonable. Your part is to make the landlord’s evidence easy: for every failed visit, note the date, the time, what happened and a photo of the card you left. Send that note to the landlord the same day. It costs you two minutes and it is often what they need most.

Agree before the first visit what a wasted trip costs. A one-line rule in your terms (“a no-access visit is charged at £X”) avoids a row later.

Pricing a batch and keeping records findable

Managing companies like one price per property. You like being paid for the time it takes. A simple structure covers both: a set price per property that includes one appliance, a set extra for each further appliance, and a lower rate when several properties in the same area are booked on the same day. Write it on one page, send it once, and keep it the same until you decide to change it. If you invoice monthly for a company, agree payment terms up front. Quotes that go quiet are bad enough; unpaid batches are worse.

Records last longer than memory. The landlord is the one who has to keep them, but they will ask you for last year’s when they’ve lost it. HSE accepts electronic records, as long as they can be printed, are secure from loss and interference, and identify the engineer. Name every file the same way, for example postcode, house number, date, and keep them in one folder per landlord. Searching “LS6” should find every flat you look after in that postcode in seconds.

Datify can take some of the typing off you. It drafts the admin side of a gas safety record from what it already knows, like the landlord, address, tenant and date, and you check every technical field and sign it. It never signs anything for you. The forms are being set up with each pilot business, and any message to a landlord or tenant goes out only with your approval or under a rule you set. There’s a 14-day free trial, then it’s £37 a month. The details are in the gas safety records guide, and the reasons the signature stays yours are in why you sign the paperwork.

Mommen Mimouni

Founder, Datify

Writes about what actually happens when you put an AI in charge of real business operations — including the parts that go wrong.