ELECTRICAL SAFETY IN RENTED PROPERTY

The regulations surrounding gas safety are nice and easy to understand, i.e. you MUST have a gas test every year, it has to be done by a registered person with a specific qualification and the certificate has to be given to the tenant within a certain timescale.

Electrical safety on the other hand has no such specific regulation and leads to much confusion.  Last year I spoke to several organisations involved in property, electrics & safety and got several different opinions as to what was required.

After consultation and much reading the following information has been put together from various sources to provide good advice for landlords.

When you rent out a house you are considered to be running a business and therefore become a “supplier” of goods or services which means that you are fully responsible for the safety of the tenant. This is defined in various pieces of legislation such as:-

  • The Consumer Protection Act 1987
  • The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974
  • The Low Voltage Electrical Equipment Regulations 1989
  • The Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations / The General Product Safety Regulations  /  The Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994

Whilst there is no direct requirement to have a Landlords test certificate to cover the electrics or appliances, there is much that can be applied when things go wrong.

If there is any incident as a result of faulty electrics, not only is there the possibility of injury, fire, death etc, but as a landlord you are also exposing yourself to possible:-

  • £5,000 fine (and that’s per item at fault)
  • Six month’s imprisonment
  • Manslaughter charges in the event of deaths
  • Civil damages to the tenant
  • Invalidated property insurance

Ignore this at your own risk because the regulations are enforced by the Health & Safety Executive. They have wide ranging powers to investigate and are unlikely to tolerate excuses such as “I thought it was OK” or “It was alright when I lived there”.  They are going to be looking for proof that you took the matter seriously and took steps to ensure the safety of the tenant.

Luckily, there is a way to protect yourself, your property and most importantly your tenant. A defence of “due diligence” is very likely to be accepted if it can be shown that the landlord took all reasonable steps to avoid committing an offence. Naturally there must be documentary evidence to support such a defence, and a certificate of safety is likely to be high on the list of acceptable documents.

Ultimately the electrical test should be about prevention rather than a “get out of jail card” in the event of disaster.  Keeping the property in good condition benefits the landlord and the tenant and hopefully should avoid any nasty surprises. 

So in terms of best advice:-

Keep it simple, keep it safe and keep it legal.

  • Treat electrical safety like you should with gas safety – test at least once a year
  • Use a suitably qualified electrician (such as NICEIC)
  • Update the electrics if recommended to do so
  • Don’t provide electrical appliances at all if you can help it (provide operating instructions and safety notices if you do)
  • Ensure tenants know where the mains isolator switch / fuse box / trip switches are
  • Visually check for any problems between tenants and re-new the certificate if required

 

 

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