If you have a home with gas central heating, here is some very important and useful information.
As your Landlord, we are bound by law to carry out an annual safety check on our gas appliances. As a tenant, you too have responsibilities. This explains what these are, how to avoid putting yourself at risk from faulty gas appliances, and what you can expect from your annual gas service.
Our responsibilities
We are committed to your safety and we take our responsibilities on gas safety very seriously. As your landlord we will ensure that:
- Gas fittings, appliances, pipe work and flues installed by us are maintained in a safe condition.
- All installations, maintenance safety checks and annual gas servicing are carried out by a Gas Safe Engineer.
- A gas service is carried out on each appliance / flue that is owned by us in your property every year.
- When you take up a new tenancy, all gas appliances / flues will be checked before you move in, or when a gas supply is available once you have moved in.
- We keep a record of each annual gas service. We give you a copy of the current gas safety certificate for your home when completed or, if you are a new tenant, a copy will be included in your Welcome Pack.
Your responsibilities
As a tenant, you too have responsibilities.
- You need to allow us access to your home to carry out maintenance or safety checks on our gas appliances. When we write to you with an appointment, please make sure you are in or contact us to arrange another date and time.
- You need to understand that not allowing our Gas Engineer in to your home to complete this safety check is extremely dangerous for you, your family, and your neighbours. We will write, phone, text and visit you so make sure you appreciate how urgent and important this is and get back in touch.
- You need to know that not allowing us in to complete a safety check could result in us forcing entry to your home. We are breaking the law if we do not carry out a safety check every year so will have no choice but to force our way in to make sure your home is safe.
We will also carry out a check every year to make sure any detectors in your home are in full working order such as smoke, heat and carbon monoxide detectors.
Repairs, servicing and Emergency number and information
You can report all gas heating faults to Lothian Gas 24 hours per day on 0131 440 4666. Their office is open 9am to 4:30pm Monday to Friday and out with these times emergency calls will be transferred to a service engineer on duty.
Can you smell gas or do you think there’s a gas leak?
The first thing to do is to make sure that you stay safe, so please:
- don’t smoke.
- don’t light matches or cigarette lighters.
- don’t turn light switches or anything electrical on or off as the switch will generate tiny sparks when operated
- put out any naked flames such as candles.
- open all the doors and windows.
- turn off your gas supply at the meter (and leave it switched off until you’re sure it’s safe to turn it back on again).
Call the National Gas Service Emergency Line on 0800 111 999 to report a suspected gas leak. They’ll sort out the problem and tell you what to do to stay safe.