Safety checks for letting agents in Scotland

If you manage lets for several landlords, you can send us one enquiry covering the EICRs, gas safety checks, PAT testing, alarms, legionella assessments and EPCs coming up across your properties. We pass each type of check to one local specialist who covers the postcode, and they deal with you directly to book and price the work.

We're a matching service, not a contractor. We don't test anything ourselves and we don't manage your compliance for you, but we can save you ringing round for each job.

What we pass on, and to whom

Each check goes to the kind of specialist the rules call for:

• EICR and PAT testing go to an electrician. Scottish Government guidance accepts SELECT, NICEIC or NAPIT membership as evidence that someone's competent to do an EICR.
• Interlinked alarms: mains-wired alarms must be fitted by a qualified electrician, so these usually go to the same electrician. Sealed battery alarms don't need one.
• Gas safety checks go to a Gas Safe registered engineer.
• Legionella risk assessments go to a competent assessor. For a simple domestic system the landlord may be able to do it themselves, which is worth checking before you book.
• EPCs go to an assessor who's a member of an approved organisation.

What we send them is what's on the form: the postcode, the checks, the number of properties, property type and size, timing, and your contact details and message. Nothing else.

Getting several checks done in one visit

Because the checks are split across different trades, a single visit that covers everything isn't always possible. You can still cut down the number of times a tenant has to let someone in:

• An electrician can usually do the EICR, PAT testing and any mains-wired alarm work in the same visit.
• The gas engineer can check the CO alarm while they're there for the annual gas check.
• Say in the message box that you'd like visits on the same day, or that the tenant can only do certain days. The specialists can then arrange around each other.

Keeping renewal dates straight across a portfolio

The hard part with a lot of properties isn't the checks themselves; it's knowing what's due where. The intervals in Scotland are:

A few habits help. Keep one register with a row per property and a column for each check, with the next due date rather than the last done date. Look at it on the same day each month and book anything due in the next 60 days. Use the gas 2-month window so annual checks don't slip. And file the certificates where the whole team can find them, because the tenant needs copies of the EICR and gas record, and the landlord has to keep the EICR for six years and gas records for at least two.

Our renewal date calculator works out the next due date for each check from the last one, which is handy when you take on a new property and need to fill in the register.

Taking on a new property

When a landlord signs up with you, ask for the latest EICR, gas safety record, PAT record, legionella assessment and EPC, and check the alarms against the room-by-room list. Anything missing or out of date can go on one enquiry. The landlord certificates checklist and the printable new tenancy checklist are useful to send to landlords who aren't sure what they need.

Where we cover

We take enquiries from anywhere in Scotland and have area pages for Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee. If a property is somewhere we can't place, we'll tell you rather than leave you waiting.