Gas safety certificate issue

Barking22

Hi - we are 2 months into buying a property. Cash, no chain. The vendor is the previous owners executors with solicitors acting on their behalf. We had the survey done a month ago and can see no reason for the hold up but our own solicitors is finding it increasingly difficult to get a response from the vendors on any of the questions he's put to them. Our main concern is the gas safety certificate which it seems they don't have - possibly understandable with a deceased relatives property. We are willing to pay to have a safety inspector go in and check the boiler which we know is quite old and the survey suggests doesn't work but they can't seem to even agree to that. I thought it was a legal requirement to supply these certificates now? Does anyone know if we are able to complete without it? My husband is getting increasingly frustrated at the delay to the point of talking about pulling out which is obviously not constructive! The contract has been ready to sign at our end for several weeks now. We did suggest putting a caveat in the contract that we would withhold £2k for a month after completion in case of serious issues but again no response! Any ideas? We thought a cash sale would have been a straightforward affair - it seems not!

davidmcn

Unless the property was tenanted there's no requirement for there to be a gas safety certificate. Yes, you can complete without one, and your solicitor should know the answer to that question!

ProDave

If the boiler is reported to not be working I would buy on that basis, as long as the price reflects that fact. You will be getting a new boiler and new gas certificate then.

phill99

The ignorance of Solicitors never ceases to amaze me.


There is no legal requirement to have an annual safety certificate for a gas appliance in an owner occupied home. The Solicitor may be asking for a cert for when the boiler was installed. However if the boiler was installed many years ago, a cert would not have been required.


So no certificate will exist. You need to remind them of this. Get a Gas Safe Engineer to do a safety test on the boiler and then proceed.


Your solicitor needs to be pulled up on this.

System

As a seller, who is hopefully exchanging contracts this week, I have played fair and had all my gas appliances serviced. It is an intrinsic part of a service that the appliance has to be left in a gas safe condition. I even did the decent thing and I had my unvented cylinder serviced as for some odd reason it is a boiler warranty condition. I am not actually sure what the engineer did in the 5 minutes that he looked at my cylinder. He did point out that he rarely ever services unvented HW systems!

Tom99

You are buying on the assumption the boiler does not work so just go ahead and get the boiler checked out as soon as you move in.

SG27

If the boiler doesnt work anyway why are you bothered about a gas safe certificate? You will be replacing it anyway and then you get a new certificate for your new working boiler. Even if they did have a certificate what is its use if the boiler doesn't work anyway!

There is no legal requirement for this but mortgage companies will insist on one. (Or an indemnity policy)

The house I am buying has an old boiler. We plan to replace it anyway so told our solictor will do not require a certificate for it (or the 20 year rewiring) but our solictor said that unfortunatly our mortgage company do require these.

00ec25

Hengus wrote: »

It is an intrinsic part of a service that the appliance has to be left in a gas safe condition.

that is true in respect of the appliance, but a Gas Safety Certificate covers much more than just the appliance itself.

However, as stated, there is no legal requirement to have a GSC for a property unless it is let.