‘Make carbon monoxide alarms compulsory in all rental homes’

ARLA Propertymark has called for carbon monoxide alarms to be made compulsory in rented properties regardless of what heating system a property is fitted with. “At the moment, they only need to be in rooms [where there is] solid fuel burning, but we should be doing all we can to protect tenants,” says David Cox, its Chief Executive (pictured above, with Abrar Hyussain-Aziz from the Gas Safety Register). The comments come during Gas Safety Week, which runs from 18th to 24th September and is organised by Gas Safety Register, the registration body for the UK’s 120,000 gas safety engineers that replaced CORGI in 2009. This year’s event was launched last week in parliament with the support of Barry Sheerman, MP for Huddersfield (pictured, left) who highlighted how three of constituents recently died from carbon monoxide poisoning. This included a ten-year-old boy who was found dead in his bed after being poisoned by carbon monoxide leaking from a faulty boiler in the house next door. Chef Gordon Ramsay was caught up in a carbon monoxide scare recently when two members of his staff at the London House brasserie in central London were assessed for carbon monoxide poisoning, and adjoining flats evacuated.…