Gas safety in a UK holiday let: who is a landlord, and what the check involves

Of all the safety duties attached to a British holiday let, the gas one is the least negotiable and the most often misunderstood. Owners assume it belongs to the world of long tenancies, of assured shorthold agreements and six-month deposits. It does not. The Health and Safety Executive puts rented holiday accommodation on its own list of premises where landlords' duties apply, and it names the building types: chalets, cottages, flats, caravans, and narrow boats on inland waterways.

Why a holiday let owner is a landlord here

The HSE list is deliberately broad. It covers rooms let in bed-sit accommodation, private households, bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels, alongside the holiday accommodation that concerns most of our owners. If gas reaches the property and you are the one letting it out, you are in.

The two duties, which are not the same thing

Owners tend to merge them. They are separate, and only one of them has a fixed interval.

A boiler service and a gas safety check are not interchangeable, and an engineer who does one has not necessarily done the other. Ask for both, in writing, on the same visit.

You cannot hand the duty to someone else

Two situations come up constantly in our conversations with owners.

Sub-letting. If you let the property to someone who then lets it on, you remain responsible for the gas safety checks as the original landlord. HSE is explicit that you cannot transfer the responsibility to a tenant who is sub-letting, and that where a property is wholly sub-let the contract must clearly allocate who completes the check.

Managing agents. Using an agent does not dissolve the duty; it relocates it, and only if the paperwork says so. The management contract must clearly specify who arranges maintenance and safety checks and who keeps the records. Where the contract gives the agent that responsibility, the same duties that apply to a landlord apply to the agent. HSE strongly advises that you still request copies of the maintenance information and the safety check. We work to that standard as a matter of course: an owner who cannot produce the current record on request does not have the protection they think they have.