The most comprehensive compliance reports on the market

With the introduction of this regulation there has been an enormous amount of liability placed upon both landlords and letting agents to ensure they comply with this regulation, with no helpful guidelines on how to achieve this. 

At Blinc we have looked into the regulations at length and developed a compliance report that fully covers all aspects of the requirements. 

The main points to focus on with this regulation is section 4, that clearly states the requirement to have the alarms in place applies to all tenancies, including those where tenants moved in prior to October 2015. 

Section 4 of the regulation states:

4.—(1) A relevant landlord in respect of a specified tenancy must ensure that— 

(a) during any period beginning on or after 1st October 2015 when the premises are occupied under the tenancy— 

(i) a smoke alarm is equipped on each storey of the premises on which there is a room used wholly or partly as living accommodation; 

(ii) a carbon monoxide alarm is equipped in any room of the premises which is used wholly or partly as living accommodation and contains a solid fuel burning combustion appliance; 

and (b) checks are made by or on behalf of the landlord to ensure that each prescribed alarm is in proper working order on the day the tenancy begins if it is a new tenancy.  

Our compliance reports provide evidence of due diligence on the part of either the landlord or letting agent, that they have taken all reasonable steps to comply with this regulation and that the required alarms are in place, in date and in full working order at the time of the report. 

A common misconception is that the test button is a full check for working order of these alarms, however this is not the case. The test button simply checks the electrical circuit of the alarm, it does not check the actual detector, this must be done using test gases. The alarms also have a limited life period, between 3-10 years, and an expiry/replace by date on them. We have replaced many alarms that were in place in rented properties that held a 'replace by date' of many years previous. some dating back to the 1990's!! 

Our reports will clearly detail the alarms in place, including make and model, the expiry date of these alarms and the test results, including power, audio, and detector (using test gases).

Our view on this regulation is that, when there is a fire in a rented property either the landlord or the letting agent will be required to produce evidence of the steps they had taken to check the alarms in a property. Our reports provide this, as well as ensuring you are not unwittingly letting a property with expired or non-functioning alarms.