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If you rent your home from a private landlord or social housing provider, then they will be under an obligation to ensure that all gas fittings in the property you occupy are regularly inspected and maintained in a safe condition.  If they fail to do this, and as a result a gas explosion occurs in which you or a visitor to your home are injured, then you will usually be entitled to hold them to account and to sue for appropriate compensation.  

However, there is a grey area in the regulations that govern this aspect of the law and which may mean that if you do not take specialist legal advice you could end up being denied the compensation you are due.  Anna Rushton, who deals with serious injury cases resulting from gas related fires and explosions, explains more in this informative blog.

Gas Regulations

Pursuant to section 36 of The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, most residential landlords are obliged to:

• Ensure that any relevant gas fittings (and any flues which serve them) are maintained in a safe condition, so as to prevent the risk of anyone in lawful occupation of the property from being injured; 
• Arrange for the gas fittings and flues to be inspected within 12 months of being installed, and at no more than 12 monthly intervals thereafter; and
• Ensure that an appropriate record of any checks carried out is retained for at least the following two years, and that this records certain prescribed information, including a description of all appliances checked, where they were located, an defect(s) identified and any remedial action taken to ensure that they remain safe. 

The definition of ‘relevant gas fitting’ means any gas appliance (other than one which the tenant is entitled to remove from the premises), or any installation pipework installed in the premises, and any gas appliance or installation pipework which directly or indirectly serves the premises and which either is installed in any part of the premises within the landlord’s ownership or which is under their control.  

Grey area

The grey area within the regulations is whether a flexible pipe connecting a cooker owned by a tenant to the gas mains supply falls within the definition of installation pipework and is therefore caught by the obligation to inspect imposed on the landlord.

A real issue

You may think it unlikely that the validity of a claim may turn on this, but it is a question that arose recently in a case that we handled and unfortunately the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have confirmed to us that there is no definitive guidance as to how the question should be answered – which means that there is potential for a landlord to try to dispute a claim where the cause of an explosion stems from a pipe which connects a privately owned appliance to the gas main.

According to HSE, the answer will turn on whether the pipe can be described as an integral part of the cooker. If it can, and the cooker is owned by the tenant, then it is at least arguable that the pipe will not fall within the definition of installation pipework. However, if it is not an integral part of the cooker then it will fall within the definition and so there will be an obligation on the landlord to inspect and maintain it. 

Implications 

Due to the technical nature of the gas regulations, it is vital that if you or a relative have been injured in a gas explosion that you seek expert legal advice to determine whether anyone can be held to account and, if so, to ensure that you receive the compensation that you deserve.

In the case that we recently handled, referred to above, we were successful in getting a well-known national gas company to take responsibility for injuries sustained in an explosion in circumstances where it could have been difficult to hold the landlord to account. We were able to do this by showing that the gas company had been negligent in the way that they had performed the inspections requested by the landlord, and that it was as a result of their incompetence that an obviously dangerous gas cooker pipe was allowed to remain in situ when it should properly have been flagged up as dangerous and taken immediately out of use.

The client in that case is now in line for a six figure pay out. You can find out more about the case by clicking here.

Need our help?

If you have been seriously injured in an accident that was not your fault and you would like to find out if a personal injury claim may be possible, then why not give Anna a call on 0800 195 6412 for an informal chat.  We provide a free initial consultation and provided we are satisfied that your claim has reasonable prospects of success, we can usually take your case on under a no win, no fee agreement. 

We also offer a free interpretation and translation service for Polish clients.