Letting agents and landlords have been warned over hundreds of thousands of rented homes in England missing carbon monoxide alarms.

The comments have come during Carbon Monoxide Awareness week and made by appliance care provider Domestic & General, which says landlords face fines of up to £5,000 if properties are found to lack the alarms.

The firm says its research found that 10% of tenants it quizzed said their homes, which featured gas boilers, didn’t have an alarm, suggesting some 400,000 rented homes in the UK could be operating illegally.

For the past two years it has been a requirement for rented homes that feature gas appliances to have a carbon monoxide alarm, as required by the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations since October 2022.

Alarming

Properties must feature such an alarm in any room used ‘as living accommodation’ which includes a fixed combustion appliance (excluding gas cookers) such as a gas boiler.

Ian Palmer-Smith, appliance repair expert at Domestic & General, says: “How many alarms you need depends on the size of your home and the number of applicable appliances you have.

“As a general rule, you should have a CO alarm on every level of a rented property, as well as near areas such as bedrooms, and any room that contains a boiler, fire, or stove.”

Landlords are being urged to test the alarms on a monthly basis, and Palmer-Smith says that: “CO is both invisible and dangerous, which means we have to rely on alarms to alert us of its presence”.

The Awareness week campaign points out that in England and Wales there are approximately 40 deaths and more than 440 hospital admissions each year as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.