Weighing up the risks

I have been reading with interest the issues faced by colleagues south of the border in terms of gaining access to their tenants’ homes to carry out gas safety checks.  Apparently the solution being looked at involves a change in the law {amendment of the Gas Safety (Installations & Use) Regulation Act 1998} – always difficult and time-consuming to achieve. 

Here in Scotland, we operate under that same legislation, but our Scottish Secure Tenancy Agreement enables landlords, if they choose, to make forcible entry to our properties provided we have given the tenant every reasonable opportunity to let us in voluntarily – and to charge them the cost of doing so.

At my own organisation, we were criticised by the then regulator, Communities Scotland, in 2004 for only achieving annual gas safety checks on time for 65 per cent of our 700 properties. We would certainly have been placed on a ‘watchlist’ for that. Such poor performance called for drastic action, and this is what we did:

• We considered whether or not to use the power we had within our tenancy agreement to force entry. In doing so, we weighed up the risk of punishment for breach of health and safety legislation (fine and imprisonment) against the risk of being sued for a breach of Article 8. We decided to force entry where required.
• We introduced a 10 month gas safety programme (meaning that most of our tenants had their gas safety checks every 10 months) – this bought us some time to get access to the more stubborn offenders.
• We stepped up our communication with our tenants regarding the benefit to them and to their neighbours in gaining access for gas safety checks. We told them that, if they failed to let us in on time, we would force entry.
• We introduced an annual home visit programme – we now visit every single tenant at least once every single year.  This has enabled us to get to know our tenants very well indeed – including those whose vulnerability might mean that we would have difficulty in gaining access for the gas safety check.  We then keep in contact with such tenants more frequently so that they are comfortable with our staff and contractors find it easier to get access to their homes when needed.

The result of all of this has been that we have consistently achieved 100 per cenrt of annual gas safety checks on time for the last nine consecutive years. In all that time, we have never had to actually force entry to any of our tenants’ homes – although we did threaten it quite frequently in the early days, including actually scheduling dates to do so.  Those threatened with this always let us in voluntarily when push came to shove. Our tenants now know that we mean it when we say we need in, and we can all sleep at night knowing our tenants’ homes are as safe as we can make them.

I understand that, in England and Wales, landlords do have a right to request access for repairs and maintenance, with the notice period being written into tenancy agreements.  Maybe, rather than a change in the legislation, it is just a case that landlords need to take a stronger line in terms of using the powers which their tenancy agreement already gives them, and also to spend a bit more time getting to know their tenants well.

Elaine Gibson is the director of ANCHO and the former chair of CIH Scotland 

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