There are only four things on the list and yet almost every penalty a landlord picks up comes from one of them being out of date rather than missing. This is what each record covers, how long it lasts and who is entitled to a copy.
Nobody fails at this because they did not know a gas check was a thing.
They fail because the check happened, the certificate went into an email attachment in March 2024 and nothing on earth reminded anybody that it ran out. The paperwork exists. It is just not in date. Out of date is treated exactly the same as never done.
So this is not a list of things to go and buy. It is a list of dates, who is owed a copy of what and the two rules that catch people out even when they are on top of everything else.
The short version
- Gas safety record: a check every 12 months by a Gas Safe registered engineer, on the appliances and flues you own
- Electrical report (EICR): at least every 5 years, or sooner if the report itself names a date
- Energy certificate (EPC): valid 10 years, band E or better today, band C from October 2030
- Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms: a duty with no certificate, so nothing reminds you it has lapsed
- A tenant is entitled to a copy of the first three and the timing of that is part of the law, not a courtesy
- An unsatisfactory report outranks a valid date: a fresh fail is worse news than an old pass
Gas: a record every twelve months
Every gas appliance and flue you own in the property has to be checked once a year by an engineer on the Gas Safe Register. What you get back is a gas safety record, still widely called a CP12 after the form it used to be.
Three things about it are worth knowing.
The engineer's registration is checkable and you should check it. Gas Safe lets you look up an engineer by their licence number and the card they carry lists which types of work they are qualified for. Being registered for cookers is not the same as being registered for boilers.
You can renew early without losing time. If you get the check done in the last two months of the current record, the new one usually runs from the old expiry date rather than from the day of the visit. That means booking in October for a December expiry costs you nothing. It is the single easiest way to stop a lapse.
The tenant gets a copy, on a clock. An existing tenant is entitled to the record within 28 days of the check. A new tenant gets it before they move in. Keep the records for two years.
Appliances the tenant owns are theirs. The flue serving them is usually still yours.
Electrics: a report at least every five years
Since 2021 every private rented home in England needs an Electrical Installation Condition Report, an EICR, covering the fixed wiring: the consumer unit, the circuits, the sockets and the switches. Not the appliances and not the tenant's extension leads.
Five years is the maximum, not the default. The inspector can write a shorter interval on the report and if they do, that is your date. Read the front page rather than assuming.
The report grades what it finds. C1 means danger present. C2 means potentially dangerous. FI means further investigation needed. Any of those three makes the report unsatisfactory. You then have 28 days to put it right, or less if the report says so, followed by written confirmation of the remedial work to the tenant and, if they ask, to the council.
C3 is only a recommendation for improvement. It does not make a report unsatisfactory and you are not obliged to act on it, though it usually tells you what the next inspection will grumble about.
Copies: existing tenants within 28 days of the inspection, new tenants before they move in, prospective tenants within 28 days of asking and the local authority within 7 days if it requests one.
The EPC and the band that changes in 2030
An Energy Performance Certificate lasts ten years and has to be given to prospective tenants free of charge, before they commit.
The band matters as well as the date. Under the minimum energy efficiency standards you cannot let a property rated F or G unless you have registered a valid exemption on the PRS Exemptions Register. An exemption is not a shrug. It is an entry with evidence behind it, one that expires.
The bigger change is already announced. The Warm Homes Plan published in January 2026 confirmed that privately rented homes in England and Wales will need to reach the equivalent of band C by 1 October 2030, with a cost cap of £10,000 per property and the legislation expected in 2027. The earlier idea of a 2028 date for new tenancies was dropped, so it is one deadline for everybody rather than two.
Four years sounds like plenty. It is roughly one boiler replacement and one round of insulation away. The useful thing to do now is find out what your current certificate actually recommends. That list is free, it is already written and it is the cheapest version of the work.
Alarms are a duty with no certificate
England has required at least one smoke alarm on every storey with living accommodation since 2015. October 2022 added the second half: a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation that has a fixed combustion appliance. Gas cookers are excluded. Wood burners, gas fires and boilers are not.
You also have to make sure the alarms work at the start of each new tenancy and repair or replace one as soon as a tenant tells you it is faulty.
Notice what is missing. Nothing issues you a certificate, nothing has an expiry date and nothing lands in your inbox. It is the only duty on this page that has no paperwork of its own, which is exactly why it is the one people cannot prove they did. Photograph the alarms at check-in with the tenant present, then write the date down. That photograph is your evidence.
The same applies to legionella. There is no legionella certificate for a normal house, whatever a company selling one tells you. What the law asks for is a risk assessment, which for most small properties is a short written record that you have thought about it.
The dates are the hard part
Every landlord who gets caught out has the same story. It was not that the work never happened. It was that four records with four different renewal cycles, one of them five years long, ran on separate calendars and one of them quietly ran out.
Three things make it manageable.
Put the expiry date somewhere that reminds you, not the certificate date. They are not the same field and only one of them is useful.
Diarise the gas check for two months before it runs out, so you keep the anniversary date rather than pushing it later every year.
Keep the certificate itself, not a note that it was done. When a tenant, a council or a buyer's solicitor asks, they want the document. A spreadsheet row saying "done, Feb 24" is not evidence of anything.
Worth knowing what is coming: the Renters' Rights Act brings in a Private Rented Sector Database, with registration expected to begin rolling out from late 2026. Landlords will have to be able to show compliance rather than just claim it. Having the four documents in one place with their dates on them stops being tidy housekeeping and starts being the thing you are asked for.
Keep the dates somewhere that nags you
homehogs holds each certificate with its own expiry and tells you before it runs out, so the gas record does not lapse while you are watching the five year one.
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