Section 21 gas safety battle heads to Supreme Court

A key legal case about the legality of Section 21 evictions is to be heard in the Supreme Court after a landlord has been given leave to appeal against a earlier Appeal Court decision.

The Harker v Hubert case hinges on the issues of valid Gas Safety Certificates and their requirement if a Section 21 notice is to be issued, including when they were given to a tenant either at the point of a tenancy starting or within 28 days.

Letting agents must comply with Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations before serving a valid Section 21 notice, including the provision of a current gas safety record to existing tenants within 28 days of the annual safety check and, crucially, for a gas safety record to be provided before a new tenant first occupies the property.

Case summary

To summarise this technical legal case, the tenants are arguing that the Section 21 issued to them in 2023 was invalid because, although the landlord claimed the property had a Gas Safety Certificate, this could not be found back in 2007 when the tenancy started, despite being before Section 21 evictions were linked to Gas Safety Certificate requirements.

Their case is that although their tenancy started before this legal change took place in 2015, the Section 21 served on them afterwards is still not valid.

While a County Court rejected the tenants’ claim in 2025, an Appeal Court decision backed them, but the landlord involved has now won another day in court in the Supreme Court for a final decision.

Wales has and will continue to have a very similar restriction on Gas Safety Certificates for its Section 21 equivalent.”

Property industry legal expert David Smith of Bishop & Sewell says that while letting agents may wonder what all the fuss is about given Section 21 evictions have been scrapped by the Renters’ Rights Act, he points out that “there are several thousand Section 21 possession cases being heard in the county courts right now and Wales has and will continue to have a very similar restriction on Gas Safety Certificates for its Section 21 equivalent”.

The case has been prompted by the changes made to the Housing Act 1988 by the Deregulation Act 2015 which linked Gas Safety Certificate provision to valid Section 21 notices, and the nitty gritty of how it’s done.

28 days deadline

“The first was to provide a landlord’s Gas Safety Certificate within 28 days of any previous certificate running out and the other was to provide a GSC before the tenant first occupied the property,” says Smith.

“The second of these requirements was widely flouted as it had become conflated with the first so that many landlords and agents thought, wrongly, that provision of a GSC within 28 days of the tenancy start was sufficient.

“In the case of Trecarrell House v Rouncefield the Court of Appeal provided a degree of exemption by saying that where a landlord had obtained a Gas Safety Certificate before the tenant moved in but had not given it to the tenant then that would be acceptable.

“However, this still left open the issue of what would happen if the landlord never had a GSC at all or was unable to show that they did. This is the issue in Harker vs Hubert.”