Landlord compliance checklist — every certificate you need

If there's any gas in the property — a boiler, a hob, a fire, even just a meter and dormant pipework — you need a fresh Gas Safety Certificate every twelve months. The check has to be carried out by a Gas Safe-registered engineer, and the official register lives at gassaferegister.co.uk. Once you have the CP12 in hand you have twenty-eight days to give a copy to the tenant. Any new tenant gets one before they pick up the keys. The duty sits squarely with the landlord under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, and a breach is a criminal offence rather than a civil one. On conviction the penalties can include an unlimited fine and up to six months' imprisonment, and gas-related injuries or fatalities have been prosecuted as gross negligence manslaughter. This is the one regulation no landlord can afford to be casual about. In practice the discipline that matters is booking the next check before the current certificate expires. Most engineers send a reminder a month out, but the responsibility for the date sits with you, not them. If a tenant refuses access for the inspection, document every request in writing — there's a Section 8 ground that covers persistent refusal, but you'll need the paper trail to rely on it.

The Electrical Installation Condition Report — usually shortened to EICR — has been mandatory for new tenancies in England since 2020, and it needs renewing every five years (sooner if the report itself demands it). The inspection has to be carried out by a qualified electrician, typically NICEIC or NAPIT registered, and you have twenty-eight days from the date of inspection to give a copy of the report to the sitting tenant. Any new tenant gets one before move-in. The codes the inspector writes against each issue are what determine your next move. C1, C2, and FI codes are the urgent ones — these have to be remedied within twenty-eight days, and you need written confirmation from the electrician that the issues have actually been resolved. C3 codes are advisory; you don't have to action them, but most landlords do, on the principle that one minor concern noted today often becomes a C2 next time around. The local council can impose a financial penalty of up to £30,000 for breach. The fines are graduated — a first administrative oversight is treated more leniently than a wilful refusal to act on a dangerous report — but they aren't trivial. In cost terms, an EICR on a typical two- or three-bed property runs £200 to £350. Any remedial work is on top of that, sometimes a few hundred pounds, occasionally a rewire that costs thousands. Budget the inspection, but don't budget the outcome.

An Energy Performance Certificate has to be in place before a property is marketed to let, and it remains valid for ten years. The current minimum rating for the private rented sector, under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards Regulations 2015, is band E. Letting below E without an exemption registered on the PRS Exemptions Register is a breach. That minimum is rising. From 1 October 2030 all PRS tenancies will need to be rated band C or above. The Labour government confirmed the date in the Warm Homes Plan published in January 2026, with a £10,000 spending cap per property — landlords don't have to spend more than that on improvements, and if you hit the cap without reaching C you can register an exemption. There's a small transitional concession too: any property already holding a C-rated EPC issued before 1 October 2029 stays compliant under the old rules until that certificate expires. If your property is currently a D or below, the time to plan is now. Insulation, heating controls, and LED lighting are the usual easy wins, and a fresh EPC after the work is the only way to get the rating updated on the register. Penalties for letting below the minimum standard run to £30,000 — rising with how long the breach has been allowed to continue — plus a public listing on the PRS Exemptions Register, which most landlords would rather avoid.

A tenancy deposit must be protected within thirty calendar days of you receiving it. There are three government-approved schemes to choose from — the Deposit Protection Service (DPS), MyDeposits, and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) — and in the same thirty-day window the prescribed information has to be served on the tenant in writing. That means the scheme details, the property address, and the certificate or deposit ID. All of it in writing, all of it within thirty days. The deposit itself is capped under the Tenant Fees Act 2019 at five weeks' rent, or six if the annual rent exceeds £50,000. Getting any of this wrong has serious consequences. The tenant can claim between one and three times the deposit at the county court. And until the breach is remedied, you cannot rely on certain mandatory grounds for possession under the Renters' Rights Act regime — the court will refuse to grant possession on those grounds however good your case otherwise is. Under the new regime, deposit protection is one of the first things a court checks before considering any possession application. Don't trust your memory on this one. Check the scheme certificate every time you take a new tenancy, and again before you serve any notice.

Right to Rent is the duty, under the Immigration Act 2014, to check that every adult moving into the property has the legal right to rent in England. The check is documentary — passport, BRP, or Home Office share code — and if any of the rights you've checked are time-limited, you have to repeat the check before they expire. Civil penalties were uplifted in February 2024 and are now significantly higher than they used to be. A first breach attracts a fine of up to £10,000 per occupier; a repeat breach within three years up to £20,000. A landlord who knowingly lets to someone without the right faces unlimited fines and up to five years' imprisonment. It isn't an area to be approximate about. Until the Renters' Rights Act, landlords also had to issue the government's How to Rent guide at the start of every new tenancy — and reissue it whenever a new version was published — as a procedural prerequisite for a valid Section 21 notice. With Section 21 abolished and tenancies now periodic from day one, that separate requirement has gone. In its place, new tenancies must include a written statement of the key terms — and in practice that statement now forms part of the tenancy agreement itself, so there's no separate guide to hand over and log. An accurate, up-to-date tenancy agreement is what a court will expect to see.

The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015, as amended in 2022, require a smoke alarm on every storey of the property and a carbon monoxide alarm in every room used as living accommodation that contains a fixed combustion appliance. Gas boilers count; gas cookers don't. Every alarm has to be working at the start of each new tenancy, and you need to be able to evidence that you checked. During the tenancy, the landlord has to repair or replace any alarm reported as faulty as soon as is reasonably practicable. The local council can impose a remedial notice and, on non-compliance, a fixed penalty of up to £5,000. This is the cheapest piece of compliance on the entire list and the easiest to forget. A £30 ten-year sealed-battery alarm on each floor, replaced once a decade, takes the obligation off your plate between tenancies — and is materially safer than a wired alarm with a dead backup battery that everyone assumes is fine.