Gas safety during the Coronavirus outbreak

Make sure your properties are fully compliant by reading the Gas Safe guidelines

Last week we blogged about an important legal case, which centred on gas safety certificates. In Trecarrell House Ltd v Rouncefield the Court of Appeal found that not providing a gas safety certificate before a tenant moves in does not prevent a landlord from serving a Section 21 notice as long as the certificate has been given at some point during the period of occupation. 

Good news for landlords and clarification of a legal point that wasn’t particularly clear. Compliance with the gas safety regulations is a legal obligation for landlords, and to make this absolutely clear, the HSE has a handy guide to gas safety on its website, which focuses on the special circumstances of the coronavirus outbreak. The advice is really helpful so we thought we would share it with you.

Landlords should all be up to speed with their legal duty to repair and maintain gas pipework, flues and appliances, do annual gas safety checks and keep a record of each safety check. But the HSE recognises that it may be difficult to carry out these checks at the moment because, despite the lifting of lockdown restrictions, some tenants are still shielding or self-isolating. So landlords must use their common sense and weigh up the risk to the safety of the household and the public presented by a potentially faulty gas system, versus the risk to tenants’ health from possible infection.

The Gas Safety Register has drawn up guidelines for landlords that include a set of scenarios to help you decide how best to tackle your compliance obligations. The law is flexible and where it’s not possible to carry out a gas check, it should be acceptable to document that you took reasonable steps to do so. However, the advice also clearly states that landlords should not simply suspend all gas safety checks for the duration of the pandemic. We could find ourselves living with Covid-19 for many months and ignoring health & safety issues risks endangering tenants unnecessarily.

So if you’re worried about making sure your gas safety certificates are up-to-date, read the guidance – it’s very comprehensive and well worth five minutes of your time. And as we said last week, to make compliance even easier why not use our cloud-based platform PlanetRent to ensure all your rental properties are fully up-to-date with current legislation. It’s very user-friendly and you can access it via a mobile phone or tablet, as well as your laptop. It’s pay-as-you-go and there’s no subscription to pay, so download it today and make renting easier for you and your tenants.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too: www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

How PlanetRent takes care of compliance

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Yesterday’s Court of Appeal ruling in Trecarrell v Rouncefield is an important one for landlords. In this case, a tenant appealed against a Section 21 repossession order on the grounds that a gas safety certificate hadn’t been provided before they moved into the property. However, the Court of Appeal ruled in the landlord’s favour, determining that a gas safety certificate can be provided at any time before a section 21 notice is served.

This is an important case because if landlords can’t serve a Section 21 notice at any time during the tenancy, their right to repossession will be limited. While Section 21 is still available to landlords, this case means it can still be used in the way it was intended.

Of course in an ideal world landlords wouldn’t get themselves into a situation where a tenant has reason to take them to court. But we all make mistakes – and compliance is time-consuming. Not serving a gas certificate could be the result of something as silly as misfiling or forgetting to send an email.

To give landlords peace of mind that they need never fall foul of the rental regulations again, we’ve developed a great new cloud-based lettings platform that takes all the hassle out of compliance.  PlanetRent has a simple dashboard to help you manage compliance for one property or a whole portfolio.

Not only does it tell you what needs to be renewed but you can throw away the filing cabinet! PlanetRent will organise what is required for each property, flagging up what is safe and what is missing or expiring soon. Even better, delivering what needs to be sent to tenants is automated both as part of the lease-up and move-in tenant journeys and mid-tenancy. Documents are renewed and are clearly visible to your tenants 24/7 on their own portal that comes FREE with PlanetRent.

PlanetRent is compliance automated. And it also deals with contracts, rent collection, deposits, repairs, even marketing. Our new platform is pay-as-you-go with no monthly subscription to worry about. So why not take a closer look today – we challenge you to tell us what we’ve forgotten!

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too: www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Landlords: we just made compliance easy!

Landlord compliance is complicated.  Regulations around renting a home are many and some come with big fines for breaches. Already this year, anyone letting a home to rent has had to contend with the MEES Regulations and changes to energy efficiency standards, while new rules on electrical safety inspections are coming from 1 July.

A whole series of other regulations such as right to rent, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and gas safety checks are also down to the landlord to enforce. So we’ve made it easy to keep track of all the latest rules and regs with our newly launched cloud-based lettings platform, PlanetRent.

PlanetRent allows all key documents and files to be accessed virtually. In just one click, all new tenants are provided with legally required documents such as a copy of the Government’s How to Rent checklist and Deposit Protection Scheme details, as well as energy performance and gas safety certificates. This gives landlords peace of mind that every legal box is ticked and helps you avoid compliance-related fines that could cost you as much as £20,000.

Our real-time compliance dashboard tells you exactly what needs doing when:

Property Compliance:  EPCs, Gas safety, HMO Registrations, PAT testing, Passport expiry dates, Deposit certificates, Inventories.

Tenancy compliance:  Right to rent cheques, deposit certificates.

Equipment log:  White goods asset register, meter MPAN/MRPN/SPID No’s , meter locations & serial numbers & boiler maintenance contracts.

PlanetRent automates compliance reports to land on your desk weekly or monthly and/or go direct to your compliance manager or accountant. And best of all, our lettings software means that when the law changes, so do your processes. It’s easy – and it’s automated.

Other competing rental platforms don’t include reports or compliance visibility for landlords but don’t take our word for it. Our killer pricing model means you can pay-as-you-go, and there are no sign-up fees or subscriptions. So why not check out PlanetRent today and find out for yourself how it can save you time, money and hassle – and give you the comfort of knowing that your properties are fully compliant with all the legal requirements. 

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk