Gas Appliances and Safety
Gas Safety
Background
Health and safety in relation to the installation and use of domestic gas appliances is regulated under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations (GSIUR) 1998, which consolidate and extend earlier legislation. A primary purpose of the Regulations is to reduce the incidence of gas-related carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning which, on average, claims around 30 lives a year, many in the private sector. In addition, a number of lives are lost each year as the result of gas-related fires or explosions. Most landlords and their agents will be aware of one particular regulation in the legislation – Regulation 36 – which places important duties on most landlords of residential properies to ensure that gas appliances and flues are maintained in safe condition, annual safety checks are carried out, and records kept and issued to tenants.New legislation
Although gas safety is currently regulated by GSIUR 1998, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) plan to revise the Regulations in the near future and a consultation exercise has already taken place. The options for change outlined in the discussion document include:Cases and prosecutions
There have been several prosecutions of landlords under the GSIUR 1998, a notable case is that of R v Gurphal which was heard in the Court of Appeal on 19 February 1999.The facts of the case are that the landlord, Mr Sucha Singh left his son, Gurphal Singh, in charge of his rented property in Ipswich while he returned to India. In the meantime, and allegedly unbeknown to anyone, the chimney serving room No.1 in one of the Singhs' houses had been blocked (along with the chimney that serviced the neighbouring room and gas appliance). A gas fire was at the bottom of the chimney which should have acted as a flue. The result was that the carbon monoxide coming from the gas fire in the room could not escape up the chimney. Instead, it remained in the room. The tenant, Paul Foster, died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
As a result of its investigations, the HSE found that gas installations in more than 20 properties owned by the Singhs had been negligently installed or maintained. The gas fitter, Mr Allison, had worked on all the appliances, and, indeed, had carried out a gas safety check on the gas fire installed in the room in question some nine months previously. Furthermore, the tenant of the neighbouring room had reported a problem with his gas fire to Mr Singh, and complained of headaches (a symptom of mild CO poisoning) only 10 days before the fatal incident.
The Singh case has, as a positive outcome, helped to clarify the law in this area. The case is interesting and instructive for two reasons. Firstly, the Regulations cite the landlord as the person holding the duties with respect to GSIUR 1998 and there was doubt in some quarters of the letting industry as to whether an agent of the landlord (in this case, the landlord’s son) could be held to be liable under the Regulations.
Secondly, a gas safety check had been carried out on the property within the 12 month interval stated in the Regulations.
On the first point, the The Court of Appeal ruled that there was sufficient proximity between Mr Singh and his father for a duty of care to apply to his management role. He was in effect acting as his father's agent. The HSE guidance on GSIUR 1998 again clarifies this point (at clause 210):
“Where a breach of these Regulations is shown to arise from the act or default of a managing agent, the agent may be liable to legal action under this regulation by virtue of section 36(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, regardless of whether or not separate proceedings are taken against the landlord.”
On the second point, the court still held Mr Gurphal Singh to be negligent despite a valid gas check having been carried out within the last 12 months. It appears that the chimneys had been capped at some point in the recent past, and the chimneys could not possibly have worked properly once they were capped. The court held that a complaint by the tenant of the neighbouring room should have put Mr Singh on notice that there was a problem with the operation of the gas appliances in the building, and that it was reasonable to impose a duty of care on a landlord (or agent) that a gas appliance (and the associated flues and pipework) in a given property would be properly maintained and capable of being operated safely.
The father, the son and the gas fitter responsible for servicing the boiler were all convicted for manslaughter. The gas fitter was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment. The Court of Appeal said that Mr Singh had sufficient information about the dangers of defective gas fires to have taken action and he received a suspended sentence of nine months' imprisonment.
Gas checks
Another of the problems highlighted in the Singh case was the great variability of the standards of gas checks being carried out by gas fitters despite being registered with the Council for Registered Gas Installers - CORGI (a requirement of the Regulations). The Consumers Association carried out a survey in 1997 closely followed by Birmingham City Council who carried out a more extensive investigation. In both cases, appliances supposedly checked by registered installers failed the auditors’ subsequent inspections.In the Birmingham City Council’s case, the council worked in conjunction with CORGI to monitor the quality levels of the checks and the results were disturbing. 143 appliances were examined and one in three failed the supervised checks. Among the problems identified were:
One appliance was found to be “immediately dangerous”, and it is disturbing to discover that a significant number of gas engineers were not removing fires to check whether flues were clear of debris – a fault which has claimed a number of lives through carbon monoxide poisoning. Birmingham’s councillor Mike Nangle, then wrote to John Prescott, the minister responsible for safety in dwellings, suggesting that this is a serious problem within the industry and asked him to produce proposals to improve the standard of safety checks. Birmingham’s experience was used to add further weight to the argument that a future national licensing scheme should apply to all private lettings and include provisions making safety checks a pre-requisite of the licensing process.
Capped chimneys
One issue relating to the gas appliances in the Singh fatality was that flues had been capped off thus preventing the normal flow of gases through the appliance, and allowing poisonous carbon monoxide to build up inside the property. Why are flues being capped?The landlord may have asked his builder to provide a way to prevent birds nesting or falling down the main chimney. This does not appear to be an uncommon problem (especially in nesting season), with birds becoming trapped within the chimney behind the gas appliance. The builder's seemingly innocent solution may be to cap the top of the chimney with a clay-type louvre chimney cap or “mushroom”. In doing so, the builder has inadvertently caused a potentially fatal risk to the occupants due to the gas appliance sitting at the bottom of the chimney stack some 30 feet below which uses the flue. Both landlords and occupiers should be watchful for such chimney fittings which, although containing vents, do not generally provide sufficient throughput for the flue gases from the gas appliance.
A builder should be directed to fit a grill or mesh type capping specially-designed for the purpose. To protect against misuse, many of the clay-type caps are now stamped with a notice warning them not to be fitted to chimney flues of gas appliances.
New assessment regime
Following the revelations brought to light by the Consumer's Association and Birmingham City Council's investigations, CORGI has been under pressure to bring its house into order and the past few years has seen good progress in tightening the standards amongst CORGI-registered gas installers. One problem, for example, was that it was acceptable under the previous rules for a CORGI-registered company to be able to employ installers to work on gas appliances who were not fully trained. This particular loophole has now been plugged.For many years, gas installers have acquired their certificates of competence after being trained to standards set out in the Health & Safety Commission’s Approved Code of Practice (ACoP), ‘Standards of training in safe gas installation’. These arrangements are now being progressively replaced by verification following assessments under a new national accredited certification scheme (ACS), administered by CORGI.
For domestic natural gas work, this changeover from ACoP to ACS took place on 1 August 1999, but an extension was agreed for liquid propane gas (LPG) work. The changeover date for most LPG work is 31 March 2000.
In conjunction with the new assessment regime, gas installers are now issued with an ID card which identifies the installer and lists the appliances for which the installer is competent to work on. This system was introduced in 1998 and by now, all CORGI installers should all have been issued with the new ID cards.
New CORGI guarantee scheme
CORGI has recently launched a new safety initiative – The Gas Work Guarantee Scheme to offer additional customer protection and raise confidence in CORGI installers.The new scheme provides repair to gas installation defects in instances where a certificate has been issued, and where the installer, who carried out the work originally, is no longer registered or has ceased trading.
The new scheme, only available to CORGI registered installers, covers only domestic gas installation work and guarantees gas installation workmanship for a period of six years, with the assurance that any gas safety defect associated with the original installation and identified within that period will be rectified. Installers can then offer guaranteed protection to their customers that any defects in workmanship will be remedied at no cost. Installers will be required to issue a certificate to the customer following installation.
Mobile gas heaters
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recently issued a warning to users of mobile heaters which burn liquefied petroleum gas (LPG): mobile gas heaters which have not been properly serviced can be lethal as they can cause carbon monoxide poisoning.The warning follows six recent deaths linked to the use of mobile gas. A heater could be suspect if:
it has cracked or flaking cement around the ceramic panels at the front;
the panels are damaged;
the panels do not glow red when the fire has warmed up or they lose their red colour; or
it makes unusual purring or spluttering sounds when it has warmed up.
Fire resistant cement is used to seal the ceramic panels of the fire in position. If this cracks, pieces of cement fall out and leave gaps in the seal. Gas then burns behind the panel, instead of in front of it. This produces excess carbon monoxide and the heater is likely to make unusual and quite loud purring or spluttering sounds.
In rented property, such heaters, when supplied by the landlord are subject to the requirement for annual checks in the same way as fixed gas appliances.
Users of such appliances are advised that if they think a heater is suspect they must stop using it and either call in a CORGI-registered gas engineer or take it to a gas service centre immediately.
Also, it is always vitally important to make sure that there is a way for some fresh air to get into the room, even if the heater is working properly.
Scientists from HSE's Health and Safety Laboratory have found that heaters which have not been properly maintained can be lethal. They tested a 17-year old heater which had not been properly maintained and found that it produced lethal amounts of carbon monoxide in less than ten minutes.
The Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association has produced a new free leaflet to explain how to spot a suspect fire. Copies of the leaflets are available by calling the LPG Gas Safety Advice Line on 0800 169 2002 (calls are free).
Carbon monoxide: – the symptoms
Carbon monoxide is highly poisonous, has no smell or taste and can kill, without warning, in a matter of hours. The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include tiredness, drowsiness, headache, pains in the chest and stomach pains.
Where these symptoms affect more than one person in the home, or where they improve when away from home but recur upon return, carbon monoxide poisoning may be the reason.
Pre-tenancy checks
A further issue has arisen with regard to the gas safety regulations - the possible requirement for a pre-tenancy safety inspection prior to letting.This issue brings attention to some less well-publicised guidance in the HSE Code of Practice and Guidance which accompanies the GSIUR 1998 regulations.
One particular agent had been informed by her gas installer of the requirement for a gas safety check prior to every letting. The gas engineer even supplied the agent with a copy of the article published in the CORGI magazine which stated that:
“when tenants vacate a premise, the landlord must ensure that the gas fittings and flues are safe before re-letting.”
Clearly, the agent and her landlord wished to know whether such checks were mandatory, since an additional expense would be involved (especially if there were two or more lettings in any one year).
The actual GSIUR 1998 regulations in this respect merely make reference to the landlord’s duty that the
“gas appliances [and any flues which serve them] are maintained in safe condition”
However, the accompanying code of practice and guidance, which has statutory force, does state (para 226) that:
“When tenants vacate premises, landlords need to ensure that gas fittings/appliances are safe before re-letting. Tenants may have removed appliances unsafely (e.g. leaving open-ended pipes, having shut off the emergency control valve), or left their appliances in place. Appropriate checks should be carried out and any unsafe equipment rectified or removed before a new tenancy begins. … It is also recommended that installation pipework be inspected and tested for soundness before property is re-let.”
There does appear to be some similarity here with the electrical safety regulations, in carrying out some simple visual pre-tenancy checks. In the case of the gas safety regulations, it would be suggested as a minimum, that in order to comply with the code and guidance, a landlord could carry out a visual inspection of the gas appliances looking for any obvious signs of potential problems with the appliance or something related to the appliance (such as the pipework, ventilation grills and any flue or chimney). These checks might include:
Having read the Guidance, we contacted the Gas Policy Unit at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for further clarification.
We were advised that this guidance had been added to the Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) following the general revision of the gas safety regulations in 1998. It appears that the HSE had encountered cases where a tenant had removed gas appliances (presumably their own) at the end of the tenancy, or had other installation work carried out which resulted in the pipework being left in an open-ended and thus dangerous state.
Because such pipework is often concealed (e.g. under work surfaces), the danger was not always immediately apparent to either the landlord or the incoming tenants, and for this reason, HSE were advising that a soundness check by carried out on the pipework prior to any new letting. A 'soundness test' is simply one of the checks carried out by a gas engineer as part of the annual check in order to verify that the gas pipework is sound and that there are no leaks or other loss of pressure
In our correspondence to HSE, we pointed out that the average landlord already finds the current safety legislation sufficiently complex and costly without introducing the requirement for further inspections prior to every letting. Secondly, we pointed out that the guidance becomes absurd when interpreted with respect to short or holiday lettings since the landlord would then be expected to call in the gas engineer at frequent intervals throughout the year, prior to every letting.
In what appears to be a partial climb-down on the published guidance, HSE, in their written reply to us, now accept that in many situations, "it would not be necessary [for the landlord] to carry out a soundness test"
They suggest that the landlord carries out a visual check of the gas installation and appliances prior to re-letting a property simply to verify that no appliances have been removed or tampered with, and that neither the gas pipework nor the vents and flues that serve them have been interfered with. Where this inspection reveals any such problems, especially where appliances have been added or removed, or other evidence or enquiries might suggest that this has occurred, then HSE recommend that a soundness test be carried out by a CORGI registered installer to prevent any possible fire or explosion that might result from a gas leak.