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Gas Safety in Student Accommodation
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Gas Safety in Student Accommodation

Written by Sam | October 25, 2020

Gas safety is a very important part of health and safety not just in the student world, but also in any household, it is merely amplified with students because of the concentration of people living in the accommodation.

Firstly, the accommodation should be having a yearly service on your gas boiler to make sure it is compliant and working as it should be. If there is anything wrong, it is illegal for you to take the cover off and start working on it without a gas qualification!

The service can be completed fairly quickly and they will check the pressure of the boiler and make sure that the components of it are holding up well and there are no leaks anywhere. Once they are satisfied, they will give the landlord or letting agent a certificate to say that it has been checked.

If you do encounter a gas leak, the best thing to do is vacate the property. If you can turn the gas off at source this is down to your disgression, however, getting out and calling the gas services or your landlord or letting agent is a must.

You won’t really see the boilers in the PBSA (Purpose Built Student Accommodation) because they will have a different set up, these are usually in private rented student accommodation or housing.

You can get early warnings of a gas leak with a carbon monoxide alarm, if the landlord or letting agent doesn’t provide one of these, then you can buy one for £20 roughly and you will have peace of mind. Any good letting agent or landlord will already have these in place for you, they can be hard wired in or freestanding ones. If you are buying it, you want the freestanding one.

It is illegal for you to obstruct access to the property for a gas service or test because these are required by law, this is different from a tenancy inspection, for these they must give you 24 hours notice.

Again a good letting agent or landlord will have these planned in and they should let you know if they will be happening while you are going to be there.

Before you move into student accommodation, this should be in the pack that they give to you along with the inventory, moving in packs, tenancy, etc. If it isn’t in there, you can ask for it because they should have one and if a letting agent or landlord hasn’t got one then they will need one.

Finally, if they are having one done, the gas engineer needs to be gas safe registered, you can check this on the Gas Safe website and this means that they hold the appropriate qualifications to be able to service the boiler.

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