The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998

Gas appliances—safety precautions

26.—(1) No person shall install a gas appliance unless it can be used without constituting a danger to any person.

(2) No person shall connect a flued domestic gas appliance to the gas supply system except by a permanently fixed rigid pipe.

(3) No person shall install a used gas appliance without verifying that it is in a safe condition for further use.

(4) No person shall install a gas appliance which does not comply with any enactment imposing a prohibition or restriction on the supply of such an appliance on grounds of safety.

(5) No person carrying out the installation of a gas appliance shall leave it connected to the gas supply unless—

(a) the appliance can be used safely; or

(b) the appliance is sealed off from the gas supply with an appropriate fitting.

(6) No person shall install a gas appliance without there being at the inlet to it means of shutting off the supply of gas to the appliance unless the provision of such means is not reasonably practicable.

(7) No person shall carry out any work in relation to a gas appliance which bears an indication that it conforms to a type approved by any person as complying with safety standards in such a manner that the appliance ceases to comply with those standards.

(8) No person carrying out work in relation to a gas appliance which bears an indication that it so conforms shall remove or deface the indication.

(9) Where a person performs work on a gas appliance he shall immediately thereafter examine—

(a) the effectiveness of any flue;

(b) the supply of combustion air;

(c) its operating pressure or heat input or, where necessary, both;

(d) its operation so as to ensure its safe functioning,

and forthwith take all reasonable practicable steps to notify any defect to the responsible person and, where different, the owner of the premises in which the appliance is situated or, where neither is reasonably practicable, in the case of an appliance supplied with liquefied petroleum gas, the supplier of gas to the appliance, or, in any other case, the transporter.

(10) Paragraph (9) shall not apply in respect of—

(a) the direct disconnection of the gas supply of a gas appliance; or

(b) the purging of gas or air from an appliance or its associated pipework or fittings in any case where that purging does not adversely affect the safety of that appliance, pipe or fitting.