RBH highlight Gas Access Campaign for Gas Safety Week

Gas Service Engineer

RBH is marking Gas Safety Week by joining together with housing organisations from across the country to improve our laws on gas safety, which will save both lives and public money.

Gas Safety Week (14-20 September) is a national safety campaign to raise awareness of gas safety in the UK's 23 million gas fuelled homes. Each year, as the weather turns colder, a silent killer that remains fairly dormant through the warmer months slowly comes back to life. Incidents of Carbon Monoxide poisoning begin rising from September, peaking in the coldest winter months of November, December and January when heating appliances are most in use.

The law commits social landlords each and every year to check that gas appliances and flues in their homes are safe. This is vital to keep people protected from the threat of gas explosions and carbon monoxide poisoning – both those living in the home where the gas appliances are and those living in neighbouring homes who could be unwittingly at risk if safety checks aren’t carried out.

However, the law doesn’t allow social landlords a swift and efficient way to make sure that it can carry out the checks it is legally required to make. In fact, it can take associations as much as four months to follow the due legal process to a point where they have free access to service boilers and carry out other gas safety checks.

RBH supports the Gas Access Campaign, seeking a change in the law so that social landlords have a swift and efficient way to make sure that the appropriate checks can be carried out - saving lives and the time and money spent on visiting homes but not gaining access. The Gas Access Campaign are marking Gas Safety Week by relaunching their Parliamentary petition to raise awareness and support of this issue.

The petition can be found at: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/107940

Gareth Swarbrick, RBH Chief Executive, said: "A small change in the legislation will give us an extra tool to protect our tenants, employees and communities from the horrifying dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning. Please sign the Gas Access Campaign petition and help RBH and our fellow social landlords to save lives"