Read the full text: Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 on legislation.gov.uk.
The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 — usually shortened to GS(IU)R 1998, SI 1998/2451 — is the main UK law covering the safe installation, maintenance and use of gas appliances, fittings and flues. It re-enacted and tightened earlier 1994 regulations, and it exists to stop people being killed or injured by carbon monoxide poisoning, gas explosions and fire from badly installed or poorly maintained gas equipment.
It is made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and enforced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). It applies in Great Britain; Northern Ireland has its own separate but broadly equivalent regulations. Most people encounter it through one specific duty — the landlord's annual gas safety check — but the regulations actually cover a much wider range of gas work, including installation standards, meters, pipework and appliance testing.
Who Must Comply?
Three groups carry the main duties:
- Landlords — anyone renting out residential property under a lease of less than 7 years or a licence. This is the duty most people search for, set out in Regulation 36.
- Employers and self-employed people — anyone with gas fittings used at work has a duty under Regulation 35 to maintain them in a safe condition, in the same spirit as the landlord duty but applied to a workplace rather than a rented home.
- Anyone installing, maintaining or repairing gas fittings — Regulation 3 requires this work to be carried out by someone competent, which in practice means registration with Gas Safe Register, the officially approved body. This requirement runs through the entire instrument and is why every duty below refers back to using a Gas Safe registered engineer.
Landlord Duties in Detail
Regulation 36 is the section that gets tested most often, because it applies to every residential landlord in Great Britain, however small. If you own and let a property with any gas appliance, pipework or flue you provide for the tenant's use, you must:
- Have every appliance and flue you provide checked for safety within 12 months of installation, and at intervals of no more than 12 months after that. Since a 2018 amendment, the check can be done up to 2 months before the deadline without losing the original anniversary date — so checking early no longer shortens next year's window.
- Use only a Gas Safe registered engineer for the maintenance and the safety check — this cannot be any other tradesperson, however competent they seem.
- Keep a record of every check for 2 years from the date it was carried out.
- Give a copy of the record to each existing tenant within 28 days of the check.
- Give a copy of the most recent record to any new tenant before they move in — or, for lettings of 28 days or less, display it prominently in the property instead.
None of this can be delegated to the tenant. A tenancy agreement cannot transfer the legal responsibility, even if it tries to. If a property is sub-let, the original landlord keeps the duty; a tenant who sub-lets a room they occupy under their own lease does not become a "landlord" for gas safety purposes — that stays with whoever they rent from.
What Counts as a "Relevant Gas Fitting"?
The duty covers any gas appliance or pipework the landlord owns and provides for the tenant's use, plus any flue serving it — including shared or communal equipment the tenant has access to. It does not extend to an appliance the tenant is entitled to remove and take with them, and it does not apply to gas fittings used exclusively in a non-residential part of a building (a gas fire in the public bar of a pub the landlord also lets as a flat above, for example). Where the same boiler serves both a shop and the flat above it, though, it counts as a relevant gas fitting because it serves residential accommodation, even if the boiler itself sits in the non-residential part.
Records and What Must Be Included
The record required by Regulation 36 is commonly known in the trade as a "CP12" or landlord gas safety record, though that term doesn't appear in the regulations themselves. Whatever it's called, it must include: the date of the check; the address of the property; the landlord's name and address (or their agent's); a description and location of each appliance or flue checked; any defect found; any remedial action taken; confirmation the check covered everything required; and the name, signature and Gas Safe registration number of the engineer who carried it out. Records can be kept electronically, provided they can be reproduced as hard copy on request, are secure from loss, and uniquely identify the engineer who did the work.
Sleeping Accommodation Restrictions
Since 31 October 1998, certain gas appliances cannot be fitted in any room used or intended to be used as sleeping accommodation: gas fires, space heaters or water heaters (including boilers) over 14kW gross input, unless room-sealed; and those of 14kW or less, or any instantaneous water heater, unless room-sealed or fitted with an atmosphere-sensing device that shuts the appliance off if air quality drops. If a room already contained one of these appliances and was used as a bedroom before the rule came in, a risk assessment is needed to decide whether it can carry on being used that way.
Related Duty — Carbon Monoxide Alarms
This is a separate requirement, not part of GS(IU)R 1998 itself, but it comes up alongside it constantly. Since 1 October 2022, landlords in England must fit a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation that contains a fixed combustion appliance — gas cookers are specifically excluded from this requirement. It comes from the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015, as amended, and Scotland and Wales each have their own separate versions of this duty.
Penalties for Non-Compliance
Breaches are prosecuted under Section 33 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the same enforcement framework that sits behind most HSE-regulated duties. Magistrates courts can impose a fine and/or up to 6 months' imprisonment per offence; on indictment in the Crown Court, the fine is unlimited and imprisonment can also apply. Real prosecutions vary hugely depending on the circumstances — landlords have been fined a few thousand pounds plus costs for record-keeping and check failures with no injury involved, rising sharply where there's evidence of a real safety risk. In the most serious cases, where a tenant has died from carbon monoxide poisoning or a gas explosion caused by neglected gas safety duties, landlords have faced gross negligence manslaughter charges — a separate, more serious charge carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with UK cases resulting in sentences of several years. The HSE is the enforcing authority and gives gas safety a high priority.
How This Relates to Risk Assessments
The landlord gas safety check itself is a fixed, absolute duty — it has to happen every 12 months regardless of how low-risk the property seems, and it has to be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer, not assessed internally. It sits alongside the general risk assessment duty every employer and self-employed person has under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 — which is relevant wherever gas equipment is used in a workplace context, such as commercial kitchens, hospitality venues or shared accommodation with staff on site.
To be clear about what Anyrisks does and doesn't cover here: Anyrisks doesn't produce landlord gas safety certificates or CP12 records — those legally have to come from a Gas Safe registered engineer who has physically inspected the equipment, and no amount of paperwork can substitute for that. What Anyrisks can help with is the general workplace risk assessment that sits alongside your gas safety duties — for example, a catering risk assessment that covers gas hob and oven use as one of several hazards in a commercial kitchen.
A Worked Example
A landlord lets three flats above a shop, each with its own gas combi boiler they installed and own. Each year, before the anniversary of the previous check, they book a Gas Safe registered engineer to check all three boilers and any flues. The engineer issues a record for each flat. Within 28 days, the landlord sends each existing tenant their copy. When one flat changes tenants partway through the year, the landlord gives the incoming tenant a copy of the most recent record before they move in, rather than waiting for the next annual check. The boiler serving the shop below is checked separately as a workplace duty under Regulation 35, since it isn't covered by the landlord duty in Regulation 36.
