Landlord compliance: the certificate register every let needs

Landlord compliance is rarely a question of whether the work was done. The boiler was serviced, the electrics were tested, the deposit was protected — and then the paperwork went into an email folder and nobody could say which of four properties had a certificate expiring in November. Almost every penalty and almost every failed possession claim starts as a filing problem rather than a safety problem.

What landlord compliance actually asks for

The duties differ by jurisdiction, but the shape is the same everywhere: a document, an interval, and proof that the tenant received it.

• Gas safety: an annual check by a registered engineer, with the record given to the tenant before they move in and within 28 days of each check.
• Electrical installation condition: a periodic inspection report, typically every five years, and at change of tenancy.
• Energy performance: a valid certificate provided before the property is marketed, not at signing.
• Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms: installed, and tested on the first day of the tenancy with the test recorded.
• Deposit protection: the deposit in an authorised scheme within the statutory period, plus the prescribed information served on the tenant.
• Right to rent or equivalent immigration checks where the jurisdiction requires them.
• Licensing where it applies — selective, additional or HMO — with the licence conditions themselves treated as duties.

Build the register once

One row per property, one column per obligation, a date in each cell and the document attached to the row. That is all landlord compliance is, and it is why a spreadsheet gets you most of the way and then fails: spreadsheets do not hold the PDF, and the PDF is the evidence. Ettex Records keeps the certificate on the row it belongs to with its expiry date, so "what expires in the next sixty days" is a filter rather than an afternoon.

1. List every property, including the ones managed by an agent — the duty stays with the landlord.
2. For each, record the obligation, the date last satisfied, the interval, and the next due date.
3. Attach the certificate itself, and the proof of service to the tenant where service is required.
4. Record who performed the work and their registration number, not just the company name.
5. Set the review date from the certificate, not from when you filed it.
6. Re-check the whole row at every change of tenancy, because several duties reset then.

Serving a document is a separate duty from holding it. Keep the covering message or the signed acknowledgement with the certificate, because that is the half that gets disputed.

Where agents change the picture

A managing agent performing the checks does not transfer the obligation. Ask for the certificates themselves rather than a confirmation that everything is in order, and hold them in your own register. When the agency relationship ends, the file you kept is the file you have; the one on their system is not yours.

The compliance failures that cost most

• A gas safety record that was current but never handed to the tenant.
• Deposit protected late, which can bar a possession route entirely until it is repaid.
• An expired electrical report discovered during a dispute rather than during a review.
• A licence condition — waste, room sizes, fire doors — treated as advice rather than as law.
• Alarms fitted but never tested on day one, with no record either way.

The register is also what makes a check-out defensible: the property inventory shows condition, and the compliance file shows the property was lawfully let in the first place. Adjudicators and courts look at both, and they look at the dates.