How your home meets health and safety laws
Important message
The information here applies mostly to social and affordable homes. If you’re a shared owner, please visit the shared ownership section for information on how your home meets health and safety laws.
If you rent privately or own 100% of your leasehold home, you should refer to your lease agreement, independent legal advice or the advice and guidance linked at the bottom of our main resident rights page for a full summary of your rights and responsibilities.
Everything you need to know about how we make sure your home meets health and safety laws.
We must make sure that your home meets the standards set out in various health and safety laws, but also to help ensure that you and those living in your home are safe and feel safe. This involves us carrying out regular inspections and checks in your home as follows:
Checks that need to happen once a year
Annual gas safety check
Needed where your home has gas appliances such as a boiler or hob. This involves a Gas Safe Engineer checking the gas appliances in your home, like boilers, cookers, ovens and water heaters are safe and working properly.
Annual sprinkler inspections (where installed)
This involves a qualified engineer inspecting the age and condition of sprinkler systems.
Annual thermostatic mixing valve inspections (where installed)
This involves a qualified engineer carrying out a test to see that the thermostatic mixing valves on the taps in your home are working properly and delivering safe water temperatures.
Annual flat entrance door inspections (for buildings 11m or taller only)
This involves a qualified engineer carrying out a visual inspection of each fire-resisting door, including checking the fire-resisting qualities of the fire door hinges and all door hardware.
Checks that need to happen once every five years
Electrical installation inspections
This involves a qualified electrician carrying out a detailed inspection of the electrical system in your home to check all the electrics are safe and working properly.
Legionella assessment and periodic temperature checks (where applicable)
This involves a qualified engineer carrying out an assessment to help identify potential risk factors of legionella within the water systems in your home. Some water systems require a more frequent review. For example, buildings that have communal water tanks supplying water to multiple homes may be higher at risk of legionella than those that are individually fed by combi boilers and have no water storage.
Fire safety checks
To keep you safe, we have a duty to provide smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and replace them if you report them as faulty (by contacting our customer service centre). We also inspect these as part of your five-yearly electrical installation inspection.
For homes that share an entrance with at least one other property, we will attempt to check that linked fire alarms are working properly at least once a year. We also review fire risk assessments every 1-5 years depending on the property.
We’re also legally obliged to share fire safety information with you once a year with guidance on what to do in the event of a fire and tips on what to do to prevent a fire from occurring.
You can find lots of useful and important fire safety information in our booklet (PDF).
Your responsibilities
You have a duty to provide reasonable access to L&Q or one of our representatives to allow us to carry out these inspections and checks. If you don’t, we may have to take action to gain access, which could include going through court if necessary, putting your tenancy at risk.
You should let us know if anything that is provided for your safety, like fire doors or smoke alarms in your home or communal areas, becomes faulty so that we can repair them as soon as possible. This is not just in your home, but also safety features within any communal areas.
Please also follow our building safety advice (PDF) to avoid putting your home or building at risk of fire.
You can learn more about health and safety standards for rented homes on Shelter’s website.