Gas Safety Certificates For Landlords: What Actually Has To Happen Each Year

Any rented property with gas appliances, a boiler, a gas hob, a gas fire, needs a Gas Safety Certificate renewed every 12 months under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations. Still commonly called a CP12, after the old form number, even though the paperwork's changed shape over the years.

The check has to be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and every gas appliance and flue at the property gets tested, not just the boiler. A copy goes to the tenant within 28 days of the check, and landlords need to keep records going back at least two years.

The new certificate needs to be in place before the old one expires, not sometime shortly after. In practice that means booking the renewal a few weeks ahead of the deadline, because tenant access, engineer availability, and any faults found that need fixing before the certificate can be issued all take time you don't have if you've left it to the last week.

Houses in multiple occupation carry the same annual gas safety requirement, plus a more frequent inspection schedule for the property generally, depending on the local licensing scheme. Worth checking your local authority's HMO licensing requirements directly, since they sit alongside, not instead of, the gas safety certificate itself.

Practically, letting a certificate lapse can invalidate landlord insurance, cause problems at the point of a tenant complaint, and in a genuinely bad case lead to prosecution under the regulations. None of that is proportionate to how simple the check itself actually is; it's an entirely avoidable position to end up in.

Every certificate Willsway issues gets logged against a renewal date, and the reminder to rebook comes before the deadline, not from a tenant or letting agent chasing you after it's already gone. For landlords managing several properties, whether in Horsham or the long-standing client base around Epsom, that diary is usually the difference between one calm phone call a year and three certificates lapsing in the same month because none of them were on anyone's calendar.