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Parliament committee backs CO alarms in private rentals

A parliamentary select committee has called for better protection to tenants from carbon monoxide.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee is supporting stricter regulations on providing CO alarms in the private rented sector. It backs making CO alarms mandatory in rooms that contain any fuel-burning appliance, helping protect 2.7 million private tenants.

The select committee published its Private Rented Sector inquiry report in April 2018. The inquiry focused on provision at the lower end of the rented housing market. The report made a number of recommendations about how to better protect tenants in their homes, including supporting APPCOG’s call for private landlords to be required to fit CO alarms in the rooms of private rented properties containing any fuel-burning appliance.

Currently, private landlords in England and Wales are required to install CO alarms only in rooms that contain solid fuel-burning appliances. In Scotland, they are mandatory in rooms where there are any fuel-burning appliances.

The Committee’s report says: “We note that other parliamentary inquiries have also concluded that current legislation can be confusing to both landlords and tenants. For example, in October 2017, the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group (APPCOG) published a report which found that the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 were confusing and risked inadvertently turning landlords into ‘rogue landlords’.

“[The report] called on the government to amend the legislation to make it explicit and mandatory for landlords to provide carbon monoxide alarms in the rooms of private rented properties containing any fuel-burning appliance…

“We support the finding of APPCOG that legislation should be amended to make it explicit and mandatory for landlords to install carbon monoxide alarms in the rooms of private rented properties containing any fuel-burning appliance.”

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