Landlord wins legal battle over £3,300 gas safety paperwork fine

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A professional landlord has scored a partial win against his council fines for charges relating to gas safety inspections.

Mahendra Maharaj, who owns 78 properties in Liverpool, had been fined £9,000 by the city council – a decision confirmed by a First Tier Property Tribunal in June 2021 – concerning his property at 68 Fazakerley Road (pictured).

However, while an Upper Tribunal confirmed the £5,625 penalty for not providing evidence of regular inspections, it has quashed his £3,375 fine for not supplying a gas safety certificate by the given deadline.

The council had written to Maharaj asking him to produce a copy of a valid gas safety certificate for the property within seven days, but on 13th June 2019 this had not been provided.

It had also written to him on 5th June 2019 asking him to produce a copy of his records of inspection for the property within 28 days but by 4th July 2019 this had not been provided. It issued notices of intent on 8^th November that year.

Landlord claims

Maharajhad told the original First Tier Tribunal that on 6th June 2019 he had posted three gas safety certificates for the property, dated 8th February 2017, 29th March 2018, and 17th February 2019, along with blank, but signed, inspection records, but that the tenant had not given him access to the property.

However, both tribunals found that he had not provided any evidence of making attempts to do the inspection or having done this.

At the Upper Tribunal, his lawyer argued that the failure to provide a gas safety certificate by 13th June 2019 could not constitute an offence since it was not one of the conditions of his licence.

Read: The ultimate guide to gas safety certificates.

“The six months’ period for giving notice of intent had expired on 4th January 2019, so that any proceedings for that offence were effectively time-barred, because no notice of intent had been given until on or about 8th November 2019,” the Upper Tribunal ruled.

“The Tribunal does not regard this point as a mere technicality because it gives rise to the risk that a landlord might be found guilty of a non-existent offence, or of one that has not been properly identified to the landlord.”

Read the judgement in full.

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LATEST: New guidance to make EPCs more accurate after 10-year wait

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The government has finally updated the guidance it provides to property assessors on how to calculate EPCs for new homes and, in six months’ time, for existing homes too.

This is the first time the ‘methodologies of calculation’ have been updated for almost ten years for the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) used by assessors issuing EPCs to homeowners and landlords.

Currently in their 10^th edition, the new methodologies update assessors on how to calculate a property’s carbon emissions and heat consumption.

Changes

One of the key changes is the CO2 emissions factor for electricity which is being reduced, halving the emission factor.

This means that the carbon footprint of electric heating (rather than gas) will be more favourable in helping a landlord hit the emissions numbers as assessors in SAP 10 will find it easier to achieve compliance with electric heating. 

Stuart Fairlie, MD of leading assessor firm Elmhurst Energy, which accredits some 9,500 assessors across the UK, says the long-awaited update means EPC for new homes will, after June 15^th, be much more accurate.

“We expect the updated methodologies to be issued for existing properties to be released before the end of the year, which will make EPCs for many landlords’ properties more accurate too,” he says.

“The two government departments involves – BEIS and DLUHC – have decided to focus on new homes first, get them nailed down, and then turn to existing properties including rental homes.”

Elmurst Energy is the largest of the EPC accreditation organisations, alongside Stroma Certification, Quids, RUSFA and Bryter Digital.

The announcement by the housing ministry follows many years during which landlords and house builders have complained that EPCs can vary significantly from one property to another even though they are similar.

This has prompted some landlords to allege that that the whole EPC certificate system is misleading, as LandlordZONE reported last July and Tom Entwistle set out later on that year.

It has also led to some landlords complaining that they have faced additional costs to upgrade properties when they may have not needed to.

“A further update to the SAP is expected at some point before 2025 as the government ratchets up its ‘net zero’ targets for the housing sector, but for now at least we can now say that EPCs are as close to the truth as is possible,” says Fairlie.

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