The landlord gas safety record: nine items, twenty-eight days

There is no such thing as a CP12 in law. The term appears nowhere in the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998; it is a form number that stuck. The document the law requires is "a record" under regulation 36(3)(c), and what makes it valid is a list of nine items — not the letters at the top of the page.

That distinction is worth more than it sounds. A landlord who asks for "a CP12" is asking for a brand. A landlord who asks whether the record carries all nine prescribed items is asking the question that decides whether they have complied.

The duty behind the record

Regulation 36(2) is the substantive duty, and it is a maintenance duty, not a paperwork duty:

Every landlord shall ensure that there is maintained in a safe condition — (a) any relevant gas fitting; and (b) any flue which serves any relevant gas fitting, so as to prevent the risk of injury to any person in lawful occupation of relevant premises.

Regulation 36(3) then adds the specific obligations "without prejudice to the generality" of that duty: check each appliance and flue within 12 months of installation and at intervals of not more than 12 months, check before a new lease commences, and make and retain a record.

Two things follow that trip people up.

Passing the annual check is not the whole duty. Regulation 36(2) stands on its own. A record showing everything satisfactory in March does not discharge the maintenance duty in September.

Regulation 36(4) puts the work in registered hands. Every landlord must ensure that any work on a relevant gas fitting, and any check under paragraph (2) or (3), is carried out by, or by an employee of, "a member of a class of persons approved for the time being by the Health and Safety Executive for the purposes of regulation 3(3)". That is the Gas Safe Register. An unregistered engineer cannot produce a valid record, however competent the work — what registration itself requires, separately from this landlord duty, is set out in what regulation 3 actually requires of you.

What a "relevant gas fitting" is — and is not

Regulation 36(1) defines it, and the definition is wider than the boiler and narrower than everything gas in the building.

In: any gas appliance or installation pipework installed in the premises; and any appliance or pipework that directly or indirectly serves the premises and is either installed in a part of premises in which the landlord has an estate or interest, or is owned by the landlord or under their control.

Out: an appliance "which the tenant is entitled to remove from the relevant premises" — the tenant's own cooker, in other words. And any appliance or pipework "exclusively used in a part of premises occupied for non-residential purposes".

HSE's guidance puts the tenant's own appliance in practical terms: the landlord "has responsibilities for parts of the associated installation and pipework but not for the actual appliance". The bayonet fitting and the pipe to it are the landlord's; the cooker is not.

The commercial exclusion is narrower than it looks. It says exclusively. A boiler in the back of a shop that also heats the flat above is not exclusively non-residential, and it is in.

The nine prescribed contents

Regulation 36(3)(c) requires the record to include:

1. the date on which the appliance or flue was checked;
2. the address of the premises at which it is installed;
3. the name and address of the landlord of the premises, or where appropriate the landlord's agent;
4. a description of and the location of each appliance or flue checked;
5. any safety defect identified;
6. any remedial action taken;
7. confirmation that the check complies with the requirements of regulation 36(9);
8. the name and signature of the individual carrying out the check;
9. the registration number with which that individual, or their employer, is registered with a body approved by HSE for the purposes of regulation 3(3).

Items 7 and 9 are the ones most often absent from an improvised record, and they are the two that make it a regulation 36 record rather than a note about a boiler.

The word "safety" in item 5 was inserted on 6 April 2018 by regulation 5(4)(ii) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) (Amendment) Regulations 2018. It narrows what must be recorded to safety defects, which is not permission to leave a customer uninformed about anything else — but it is what the record is for.

What the check has to cover

Regulation 36(9) sends you to regulation 26(9): the check "shall include, but shall not be limited to" an examination of

• (a) the effectiveness of any flue;
• (b) the supply of combustion air;
• (c) its operating pressure or heat input or, where necessary, both;
• (ca) if it is not reasonably practicable to examine operating pressure or heat input, its combustion performance;
• (d) its operation so as to ensure its safe functioning.

Sub-paragraph (ca) is another 2018 addition, made by regulation 4(3) of SI 2018/139. It exists for appliances where a test point is not accessible, and it makes flue gas analysis an accepted alternative rather than a workaround.

"Shall include, but shall not be limited to" is doing real work in that sentence. Four examinations are the floor, not the specification.

Regulation 36A: the two months before, and the one time after

Before 6 April 2018, checking early cost you the anniversary. Check in month eleven and the next deadline was eleven months later, so a landlord who was diligent slowly walked their inspection date backwards through the calendar until it collided with something.

Regulation 36A, inserted by regulation 6 of SI 2018/139, fixed both halves of that.

Early, without penalty. Regulation 36A(1): where a check "is or was completed within the period of 2 months ending with the deadline date, that check is to be treated for the purposes of regulation 36(3)(a) and (b) as having been made on the deadline date". The deadline date is defined in 36A(4) as the last day of the 12 month period in which the check was required.

So you have a two-month window before every deadline. Book at ten or eleven months, and next year's deadline stays where it was.

Late, once, for one reason only. Regulation 36A(2) lets the landlord instead check "within the 2 month period beginning with the deadline date". Regulation 36A(3) restricts that discretion sharply: it may be exercised "only once in relation to each appliance or flue in the relevant premises", and "only in order to align the deadline date in relation to the next safety check of that appliance or flue with the deadline date in relation to the next safety check of any other appliance or flue in the same relevant premises".

That is not a grace period. It is a one-time tool for a property where a boiler and a fire fall due four months apart, so that one visit can cover both from then on. Using it for any other reason is a breach.

Getting the record to the tenant

Regulation 36(8) allows a copy given to a new tenant to omit the engineer's signature, provided it states that a signed copy is available for inspection at a specified address.

Note the asymmetry, because it is where holiday lets and student houses go wrong: 28 days after for a sitting tenant, before occupation for a new one. There is no 28-day period at the start of a tenancy.

How long the record is kept

Until 6 April 2018 the answer was two years. Regulation 5(4)(i) of SI 2018/139 replaced it: the record is retained

until there have been two further checks of the appliance or flue under this paragraph or, in respect of an appliance or flue that is removed from the premises, for a period of 2 years from the date of the last check of that appliance or flue.

Two further checks, in practice, is longer than two years — it is the current record and the two behind it. Filing by date of issue and deleting anything over 24 months old now destroys records you are required to hold.

When the tenant will not let you in

Regulation 36(10) is the provision that makes access the landlord's problem and nobody else's. Nothing a tenant does or agrees to do in relation to maintaining or checking a fitting is taken into account in deciding whether the landlord has discharged the duty — "except in so far as it relates to access to that gas fitting or flue for the purposes of such maintenance or checking".

Read carefully, that is a narrow but real defence, and HSE's guidance says what it takes to rely on it: "A landlord has to show that they took all reasonable steps to comply with the law." HSE suggests leaving written notice of each attempt at access, explaining the legal requirement in writing, and making at least three documented attempts before an inspector would regard compliance as demonstrated.

For the engineer, the practical consequence is simple and worth building into how you work: a no-access visit is evidence, and only if it is written down. A dated no-access note with the time, the address and the attempt number is the thing the landlord will need. A missed appointment that produces nothing is worth nothing to them.

Safety check, service, and why customers conflate them

HSE says it in one sentence: "You should not assume that an annual service inspection includes the points required by a safety check; neither should you assume that carrying out an annual gas safety check will be sufficient to provide effective maintenance."

Two different documents, two different obligations, two different prices. Selling one as the other leaves the landlord in breach of regulation 36(2) or regulation 36(3), depending on which half they thought they had bought. For the business producing these records as a matter of routine, the twelve-month check sits alongside three other statutory clocks that run at the same time — set out in the four clocks a UK plumbing business has to run.

Enforcement

HSE does not describe this as an administrative matter. Its guidance to landlords who have not had checks done: "You are putting lives at risk and breaking the law. HSE gives gas safety a high priority and will take the appropriate action to ensure compliance with the regulations; this could result in a substantial fine and/or a custodial sentence."

A short checklist

1. Diarise at ten months, not twelve. Regulation 36A(1) gives you a two-month window before the deadline with no cost to the anniversary.
2. Check all nine items are on the record you issue. Confirmation under regulation 36(9), and the registration number, are the two that get left off.
3. Send it within 28 days, and to a new tenant before they move in.
4. Keep three records per appliance, not two years' worth.
5. Write up every no-access visit and give the landlord a copy the same day. It is the only thing that makes "all reasonable steps" provable later.
6. Use the regulation 36A(2) extension once, and say in writing what it was for. It exists to align two appliances in one property, and nothing else.

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Position as at 29 August 2026. This article describes the law and is not legal or safety advice. The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 have been amended several times, most relevantly here by SI 2018/139 with effect from 6 April 2018; HSE's Approved Code of Practice L56 sets out how HSE expects the regulations to be met.

What Zirko does here: the appointment, the property, the customer and the document you issued stay together, so last year's record for a given address is found by address rather than by memory, and a no-access visit is a dated entry rather than a gap. Zirko does not produce gas safety records and does not check registration — those come from your certification software and from the Gas Safe Register.