Rogue landlord fined "for endangering mother and child"

A landlord risked the lives of a young mother and her child by providing a dangerous gas oven installed in the house he rented to them a court has heard.

Giles Boardman has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive at Plymouth Magistrates on 29 August following an investigation when the city council alerted the HSE to the lack of a gas safety certificate for the property. The council had asked Boardman to provide a certificate on several occasions.

HSE served an improvement notice on oardman, requiring him to provide a landlords' gas safety check but this had not been done by the notice expiry date.

In April this year an engineer called in by Boardman found problems with the gas controls that controlled the gas flow for oven and notified HSE. The oven was classified by the Gas Safe registered engineer as Immediately Dangerous', meaning if operated or left connected to the gas supply it could cause an immediate danger to life or property.

Boardman of Plympton, near Plymouth, pleaded guilty to two breaches of gas safety regulations and a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act. He was fined a total of £4,050 and ordered to pay costs of £513.

Landlords have a legal duty to carry out gas safety checks which are there to protect their tenants from death or injury. In this case, Mr Boardman ignored repeated requests to carry out the checks and as a result, a serious fault with the oven went undetected until discovered by an engineer says an HSE spokesman.