Smoke alarms in rented property: the smoke and carbon monoxide alarm rules for landlords

Most rented homes in England need a working smoke alarm on each storey that has living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any such room with a fixed combustion appliance, such as a boiler, gas fire or wood burner (a gas cooker does not count). The rules come from the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015, as amended from 1 October 2022.

The landlord must check the alarms work on the day a new tenancy begins, and must repair or replace an alarm once told it is faulty. The government’s Q&A booklet for landlords and tenants is the source for the rules below, including the tenancies they exclude.

Unlike gas and electrics, the law prescribes no certificate for alarms, so the dated record you keep is the evidence that you complied. This guide sets out the rules in England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own, summarised near the end.

A landlord’s alarm duties at a glance

• Smoke alarms: at least one on every storey with a room used as living accommodation. A bathroom or lavatory counts as living accommodation, and a hall or landing counts as a room.
• Carbon monoxide alarms: one in every room used as living accommodation that contains a fixed combustion appliance, gas cookers excepted.
• First day check: every alarm in working order on the day a new tenancy begins, with a record that it was tested.
• Repairs: repair or replace an alarm once you are told it is faulty.
• Who: private and social landlords in England, for existing and new tenancies alike, since 1 October 2022. Licensed HMOs meet the same duties through their licence conditions.

Where smoke alarms must go

At least one smoke alarm on every storey where a room is used wholly or partly as living accommodation. The regulations treat a bathroom or lavatory as living accommodation, so a storey with only a bathroom on it still needs an alarm.

The guidance says to follow the manufacturer’s instructions and, in general, to fix smoke alarms to the ceiling of a circulation space, such as the hallway and the landing, where they will hear a fire starting in any room off it. The legal minimum is one per storey; a large or awkwardly shaped floor may well need more to be useful.

Where carbon monoxide alarms must go

The test is the appliance, not the room type. The booklet defines a fixed combustion appliance as a fixed apparatus that burns fuel of any type to generate heat, such as a gas or oil boiler or a log burning stove; a fireplace that is purely decorative and does not work is not one.

Any room used as living accommodation that contains a fixed combustion appliance needs its own alarm: the room with the boiler, a lounge with a gas fire or wood burning stove, a kitchen with an oil fired range. A gas cooker on its own does not trigger the duty. A room with two appliances needs one alarm; two rooms with one appliance each need two.

Subject to the manufacturer’s instructions, the guidance generally puts the alarm at head height, about one to three metres from the appliance, rather than on the ceiling where a smoke alarm goes. If you are unsure whether something counts, the booklet answers the common cases, and a Gas Safe engineer can confirm the unusual ones during the annual gas safety check.

The 2022 amendment regulations: what changed on 1 October 2022

The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations 2022 became law on 27 June 2022 and came into force on 1 October 2022. They did not replace the 2015 regulations; they amended them, which is why the rules are still cited under the 2015 name. They made three changes that still catch landlords out:

1. Carbon monoxide alarms for every fixed combustion appliance. Before 2022 an alarm was required only in a room with a solid fuel appliance, such as a wood burner or open coal fire. Since then any fixed appliance that burns fuel for heat counts, which brought in gas boilers, gas fires and oil boilers. Gas cookers stayed outside the rule.
2. A duty to repair or replace. Once a landlord is told an alarm is faulty, they must repair or replace it, so a tenant’s report now starts a clock.
3. Social landlords included. The rules, which had applied only to private landlords, were extended to social housing tenancies as well.

There was no grace period for homes already let. The booklet is explicit that landlords had the months between June and October 2022 to prepare and had to comply from 1 October 2022, existing tenancies included. A home that still has a gas boiler in a living room or bedroom with no carbon monoxide alarm in that room has been in breach since that date.

Which rented homes the rules cover

The regulations apply to most private tenancies in England. The booklet lists the exclusions: accommodation shared with the landlord or the landlord’s family (lodgers), long leases, student halls of residence, hostels and refuges, care homes, hospitals and hospices, low cost ownership homes and other healthcare accommodation. Owner occupiers are not covered. For HMOs, the regulations apply to those that do not need a licence; licensed HMOs are exempt from the main parts only because the same duties are written into the licence conditions, so the practical obligation is the same.

Mains powered, battery or interlinked?

England’s alarm regulations do not say. Sealed alarms with a ten year battery, mains powered alarms and interlinked systems all satisfy those regulations, provided the alarm is fitted where the rules require and works; a licence condition or other rule that applies to a particular building can still ask for more. The guidance recommends smoke alarms that meet BS 5839-6 and carbon monoxide alarms that meet BS 50291. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland set a higher bar, covered below.

When a tenant reports a faulty alarm

The guidance advises tenants to replace the batteries first, and to report the alarm if it still does not work or they cannot change the batteries themselves. From that report, the landlord must repair or replace the alarm. The regulations do not set a number of days; what matters in any later question is the date you were told and the date it was fixed, which is why a repair that arrives through a proper repair workflow is easier to defend than one that arrived by text message and was fixed from memory.

How the £5,000 penalty is actually applied

The penalty is not automatic, and the sequence matters for what you keep on file. Under regulations 5 to 8, a council that has reasonable grounds to believe a landlord is in breach must serve a remedial notice within 21 days of deciding so. The notice gives the landlord 28 days from the day it is served to take the action it specifies.

Only if that is not done, and the council is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the duty was breached, can it issue a penalty charge notice, which it must do within six weeks of being satisfied, for an amount it sets up to a maximum of £5,000. The booklet adds that the charge applies per breach, not per landlord or per property.

A landlord who can show they took all reasonable steps to comply, short of legal proceedings, is not treated as being in breach. There is a review and then an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. The practical point is that a dated record of what was installed, tested and fixed is exactly what “all reasonable steps” looks like on paper. Every other landlord penalty sits on the landlord fines and penalties page.

Who tests the alarms during a tenancy?

The regulations give the landlord the first check: on the first day of a new tenancy the alarms must be shown to work. The booklet says plainly that it is the landlord’s responsibility to keep a record of when alarms are tested, and suggests one way to do it: have the tenant sign the inventory at check in to confirm the alarms were tested and working.

From then on the guidance expects tenants to test the alarms regularly and to tell the landlord about any fault. Nothing in the regulations requires a periodic professional test, but recording a test at each routine inspection costs nothing and closes the gap between tenancies.

How do you test a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm?

The government’s own answer is that testing needs no specialist skill and should be straightforward for a tenant to do: most alarms have a test button that sounds the alarm while it is held. The make matters, so the guidance says to follow the manufacturer’s instructions, and suggests landlords give tenants a demonstration or those instructions so they know how, and how often, to test.

Do smoke and carbon monoxide alarms have an expiry date?

Not in England’s regulations, which say nothing about replacement intervals. The alarms themselves do: a sealed alarm carries a manufacturer’s replace by date on its case, because the sensor degrades over time and the unit stops being reliable long before it stops beeping.

The National Fire Chiefs Council recommends replacing smoke alarms every ten years, and manufacturers give carbon monoxide alarms a similar or shorter service life, usually printed on the unit. None of this is statutory; it is the guidance a council or an insurer would expect a reasonable landlord to have followed. The practical rule is to treat the replace by date exactly like a certificate expiry: record it when the alarm is fitted, and replace the alarm before it passes.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

The rules above are England’s. Scotland requires, in every home, a smoke alarm in the living room or the room used most, a smoke alarm in every hallway and landing and a heat alarm in the kitchen, all interlinked so that if one goes off they all do, plus a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with an appliance that burns a carbon fuel, such as a boiler, open fire or wood burner (Scottish Government guidance).

The legal basis is the tolerable standard: since 1 February 2022 every Scottish home must have satisfactory equipment for detecting and warning of fire and of carbon monoxide (Housing (Scotland) Act 1987, section 86), and a private let must meet it as part of the Repairing Standard.

Wales requires a working smoke alarm on every storey, connected to the mains and interlinked, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a gas, oil or solid fuel burning appliance (Welsh Government guidance). The carbon monoxide alarms may run on batteries or the mains (Welsh Government FAQs). The duty is in the Renting Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) (Wales) Regulations 2022: without the alarms the home is treated as unfit for human habitation, and the landlord cannot give a no-fault notice (Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, Schedule 9A).

Northern Ireland has its own Smoke, Heat and Carbon Monoxide Alarms for Private Tenancies Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2024, in force for new tenancies from 1 September 2024 and for all other private tenancies from 1 December 2024. They require a smoke alarm in the room used most for daytime living and in every circulation space on each storey, a heat alarm in every kitchen, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room or circulation space with a fixed combustion appliance or a flue (gas cookers and ovens do not count).

Smoke and heat alarms must be interlinked and installed and maintained in line with BS 5839-6, and they can be mains wired, run on a sealed long life battery, or both. Carbon monoxide alarms must be installed and maintained in line with BS EN 50292 and need not be interlinked.

Every alarm must work at the start of each new tenancy and be replaced when reported faulty and before the manufacturer’s expiry date. A breach is an offence with a fine of up to level 4, and the Department for Communities guidance says a council can offer a fixed penalty of up to one fifth of that maximum instead.

No certificate means the record is the evidence

If a council asks, or a claim is made after an incident, the question is “show us”, and with no certificate regime what you can show is whatever you kept. It is worth holding the following for every property:

• What is installed where: a simple list, storey by storey for smoke and room by room for carbon monoxide, with the alarm type and whether it runs on a sealed battery or the mains.
• That they worked at the start of the tenancy: the check in record or inventory noting the alarms were tested, with the date.
• Every fault report and what happened next: when the tenant told you, when it was fixed, and by whom. The 2022 amendment makes this the obligation most likely to be tested, because it has a start time (the report) and an end time (the fix).
• Replacement dates: the replace by date of every sealed alarm; an alarm ten years old is a finding waiting to happen.

What a letting agent should track across a portfolio

The legal duty sits with the landlord, and a managing agent usually carries it out under the management agreement, so the record is normally the agent’s to keep. Across many properties that comes down to four questions you should be able to answer for any address at any time: which alarms are fitted and where, whether they were tested at the last check in, whether any fault report is still open, and which replace by dates fall in the next year. Alarms belong on the same landlord compliance checklist as the certificates that do exist.

Where this lives in Verixad

For a letting agency running many properties, alarms fit the machinery that already exists. An inspection records what is installed and tested, with the condition of each item. A tenant’s fault report is logged as a job with its dates on the record.

Because you can add your own document types alongside the statutory ones, an alarm record filed with its replace by date as the expiry date gets the same live status and the same reminders as a gas certificate. The property’s record then holds the whole story of installation, testing, the report and the fix, which is the sequence an enforcement question walks through.

For the certificates that sit beside the alarms, the free compliance audit is a quick date check of a spreadsheet’s Gas Safety, EICR and EPC columns (and fire risk assessments for HMOs).

General information rather than legal advice. The official guidance covers the details and edge cases for England.