Gas safety checks: Allowing us access to your home
As your landlord we are required by law to carry out certain safety checks within your home to make sure it continues to be safe for you and your family to live in.
This includes an annual gas safety check where we inspect any gas appliances and connections we have provided in your home such as boilers, fires, flues, pipework and chimneys to ensure they are working safely and efficiently.
Please allow us access
We will send you an appointment letter when it’s time for your gas safety check. It’s really important you let us in to do the inspection, so please make sure someone is home. If you know you won’t be home, we will be happy to rearrange to a time that’s convenient for you – just call us on 0345 065 5656 to let us know.
If you continue to miss appointments or choose not to allow us access to carry out the check, we can, and will, begin legal proceedings.
We have done this for a number of homes with expired gas safety checks where customers refused to let us in or kept cancelling appointments.
Our most recent court case resulted in the court ruling in our favour to grant us permission to:
- Serve the order through the letterbox after we have tried at least once to personally serve the order
- Force entry to the home if the customer still doesn’t allow us access
- Recharge the costs of the order to the customer, which on this occasion totalled £1,323 (including the court and process server fees).
This permission lasts for the full length of a tenancy so we can rely on it for any further occasions where we are denied access in future years.
Inspections during the coronavirus pandemic
Government guidance says that landlords should make every effort to make sure that gas safety checks continue to be carried out.
Engineers should follow guidance for working in people’s homes during COVID-19, details of how we’re doing this at Beyond Housing can be found here.
If you’ve tested positive for coronavirus or are self-isolating, the inspection can be delayed until the end of your isolation. Please contact us as soon as possible to rearrange your appointment for a time it can be done safely if this is the case.
We’re here to help make sure you can live safely in your home, please work with us to make this happen.
