Gas is one of the basic requirements that every home must have. It adds comfort to your life. It makes your cooking easy and comfortable. It provides a cozy environment in your home by way of providing heating and hot water through boilers.
But at the same time, it carries risks like fire, explosion, and generation of harmful gases, like carbon monoxide. Several incidents of gas-related mishaps are reported every year. To mitigate the potential risks involved in using gas in the home, the authorities in the UK imposed a set of rules and regulations known as the "Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998”.
It is intended to ensure the safety of the people and properties against possible gas-related accidents. This law binds landlords to inspect their properties annually for gas safety and get a gas safety certificate. So, if you are moving into a rented home, ensure the landlord has a valid gas safety certificate.
A gas safety certificate is a document that proves that the property has been inspected for gas safety and that the gas appliances installed in that property are safe for use. It may be in the form of a physical or digital document. The gas safety certificate check is very important to ensure your safety. As a tenant, you must ensure that the property you are moving in does have a valid gas safety certificate.
Only a gas safety engineer registered with the gas safe register is authorized to issue this certificate after inspecting all gas appliances and boilers installed in your home. The engineer will also identify faulty gas appliances that may be harmful and dangerous for the residents.
This certificate is valid for 12 months. It needs to be renewed every year. The gas safety engineer can renew it for the next 12 months after conducting a complete examination of the gas appliances in your home. The landlords are required to get it renewed in the last two months before the expiry of the current certificate.
The gas safety certificate contains quite useful information, such as:
You can preserve the gas safety certificate either in digital form or in the shape of a hard copy. The engineer may provide you with a hard copy of the certificate or in electronic form. The digital copy of the certificate can be printed in hard form at any time if you need one. You should keep this record safely stored for at least two years.
If you are a landlord, you must be clear about this important question. There should be no doubt in your mind about whether you have a gas safety certificate or not because you are the one who must have got the property checked for gas safety. However, if you have lost this document, you may contact the relevant engineer, who can provide a duplicate copy.
But it's quite a serious matter for the tenants. Ideally, the landlords would provide you a copy of the gas safety certificate within 48 hours of the inspection if you reside in the property. If you are a new tenant, your landlord is bound to provide this document within 28 days.
If at all you don’t have a copy of the gas safety certificate or if you don’t know whether the property was checked for gas safety or not, you may follow one or a combination of the following:
Ideally, the landlord, the property manager, or the landlord's representative should be the appropriate person to give you a copy of the gas safety certificate if you have lost the previous one he supplied. You can get a second copy of the certificate from your landlord. Still, it depends on an essential factor: whether his property was checked and whether he has a valid gas safety certificate. If he hasn’t done it, that would be a different scenario. You might have to urge him to get it done without any delay. If he fails, you can report it to the local authorities.
If you know the name of the engineer who conducted the annual gas safety check in your home, you can search for his contact details on the official website of the gas safe register. You can ask him to provide a duplicate copy of the certificate.
Most of us habitually preserve our important personal documents in some safe and secure place. So first of all you should check your documents. Suppose a gas safety certificate was issued and a copy was provided to you by the landlord. In that case, there’s every likelihood that you must have stored it alongside your important documents, perhaps with the rent agreement.
Searching the laptop, computer, and mobile phone may be handy. Often, we store a photo of some important documents on our computer or mobile phone. Another possibility is that you received a digital copy of the certificate from the engineer or your landlord. You may find a copy saved on your computer or mobile phone in both cases.
If the property owner has changed recently, you can contact the previous owner to check whether he has a copy of the gas safety certificate. Similarly, you can contact the previous tenant if you have moved in recently. He can provide you with a copy of the gas safety certificate if it was given to him.
In some areas, the local authorities also record the annual gas safety check conducted on the properties in their area. You may check with them to determine whether such an inspection was done on your home. If they have maintained any such record, you will know the factual status of any recent gas safety check on your home.
In some areas, the gas-supplying companies also track the gas safety checks conducted in their area of operations. If so, they can let you know whether your home was inspected anytime during the last 12 months.
This is quite handy. Closely inspect all the gas installations and appliances in your home to find any notes or markings by the inspecting engineer. He might have marked somewhere his contact number or name or identification or date of inspection or any other such hint that might be helpful.
In the first instance, it should be managed to store all the essential documents, including the Gas Safety Certificate, in a secure place. However, if you cannot preserve this vital document for any reason, you need not worry. A duplicate copy can easily be arranged, and there is more than one option at your disposal.
The easiest way to get a duplicate Gas Safety Certificate is to contact the engineers you hired to conduct the last gas safety check. You must have saved his contact number at the time of the inspection of your property. Additionally, you should also remember the date around which the engineer did the inspection.
Contact him and provide him with the details of your property and the date of the inspection he conducted. He should be able to retrieve the details from his records, and he can arrange a duplicate copy of the gas safety certificate for your property.
If the engineer is unreachable, the second option is to contact any other local gas-safe engineer. He should be able to help you get the duplicate copy of the Gas Safe Certificate. However, he will need the following information:
With the above information, he should be able to get a duplicate copy of your gas safety certificate.
The last resort is to visit the official website of the Gas Safe Register. But for this, you must have the unique ID number of your original gas safe certificate. You need to enter the postcode and address of your property and the 10-digit ID number of your lost gas safe certificate. If the provided information is correct, you can download the duplicate copy of your lost certificate.
Generally, it can be provided by the Engineer on the same day. However, it may take more time, depending on the policy and working of the firm you hire for this purpose. You may, however, request the Engineer to provide it urgently if you need to.
The cost of a duplicate copy of the gas safe certificate may vary between £15 and £50. So, ensure you preserve this certificate to avoid any such extra expense in the future.
The gas safety check is compulsory under the law. Landlords are required to conduct this annual safety check on all gas appliances, including boilers and flues installed on their properties. They are also bound to provide a copy of the gas safety certificate to their tenants within 48 hours to the current tenants and within 28 days to the new tenants.
As a tenant, you must have a valid copy of the gas safety certificate. However, if you don't have a copy and you want to know whether the property was inspected for gas safety, you can search for the gas safety certificate by following different options, as discussed above.
Fill the required information to order a gas safety certificate instantly.
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