Eight Years Without a Gas Safety Check: Know Your Assets, Don't Forget the Capped Supplies

Last month I wrote about Gas Safety Week and the emergency boiler swap that went to the wrong person. That post was about who touches the gas. This one is about something more basic: whether the annual check happens at all.

In October the HSE published a case that is hard to read. A private landlord in the north-west of England was sentenced for going eight years without an annual gas safety check on a rented house. The tenant was a mother living there with her five children.

The problem

The facts as the HSE sets them out are short. The tenant had lived in the property since 2016 and reported that no annual gas safety checks had been carried out during her tenancy. The council raised a concern with the HSE, and the HSE began investigating in October 2024.

When the HSE asked the landlord for his gas safety records, the only thing he could produce was a certificate dated November 2024, completed after the concern had been raised. He could not supply any records covering the previous eight years. He pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 36(3) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 and was fined £2,400 and ordered to pay £5,000 in costs.

The HSE inspector said the landlord showed a complete disregard for the law and put the lives of a mother and her children at risk.

For a private landlord, I do not think there is much of an excuse. You know your property inside and out. You know there is a boiler in it and should have an up to date annual gas safety check. I have heard people say if you just leave a boiler there is less chance something will go wrong, unfortunately that’s not how the law works and landlords need to ensure every boiler receives an annual service.

Where it goes wrong

Social landlords are not immune

It would be easy to read that case and think it is a private rented sector problem. Most social landlords have a gas servicing contract, a programme, a compliance officer and a monthly figure that goes to the board. Missing a check for eight years should not happen.

But a gas servicing programme is only as good as the asset list it runs from. If the list is wrong, the programme will happily report 100% compliance on properties and appliances it does not know about.

Two examples I have come across.

Two tenancies, one property. I have seen a property with two tenancies against it and on the system that can look like two homes. People then start asking whether there are two boilers, whether two certificates are needed, and which one is missing. In that case there was one boiler. The confusion came from the tenancy records, not the building.

Two properties merged into one. The opposite problem. Two flats were knocked into one larger home. On the asset register it became one unit, but it still had two boilers. So with one unit the asset team queried whether it should be listed as having one boiler. It’s something that can be easily overlooked.

The lesson is that compliance starts with knowing your assets. Number of appliances, type, location and fuel should all be recorded against the right property reference, and that record should be updated when the property changes: conversions, adaptations, mergers, splits.

The capped supply that never gets reconnected

For social housing, I think the bigger risk is not a missed check on a working boiler. It is the gas supply that has been capped for a long time.

You know the pattern. The engineer cannot get access, or finds something dangerous, or the tenant does not want gas any more, or the meter is disconnected. The supply is capped and the property is recorded as made safe. From a compliance point of view, there is no live gas appliance to check, gas contractor will attend on the anniversary date just to confirm it’s still capped. Compliance pass it over as a tenancy led process to engage with the tenant to reinstate their supply. Months become years.

It is easy to be content with “made safe”. The certificate box is ticked. But there is still a tenant living in that home.

A few things to think about:

• How are they heating the home? If the gas is capped, they may be relying on electric heaters, or nothing at all. That can be costly, and it may be a sign of a vulnerable household that needs support rather than a closed job.
• The longer an appliance sits unused, the more likely it needs replacing. A boiler that has been off for several years is not going to fire up and be fine on the day you reconnect. Expect parts to have failed, and possibly a full replacement, at a time and price you did not plan for.
• An unheated property damages itself. Cold homes get condensation, damp and mould. In winter you risk frozen and burst pipes. With Awaab’s Law now live in Scotland, a home with no heating for years is not a position you want to be explaining.

So capped supplies need managing as a live list, not a closed one. Someone should own it. Each case should have a reason, a date, a next action and a review date. That needs tenant engagement: a visit, a conversation about why the gas is off, what help is available, and a plan to get the heating back on safely. Where access is the issue, you need a clear, consistent process that the tenant understands, rather than a capping that becomes permanent by default.

Conclusion

The private landlord in the HSE case had very little excuse. One house, one boiler, eight years and no records. The HSE was right to take it to court.

Social landlords are in a different position, with programmes, contracts and reporting. But the same basic failure can happen if we do not know our assets, or if we treat a capped supply as the end of the story.

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