Housing association, Home Group, has launched a gas safety campaign to protect families and save nearly £0.5bn.

Campaigners are calling on the Government to beef up legal powers to allow regulated social landlords to access their properties to carry out mandatory gas safety checks.

Home Group is working with the Association of Gas Safety Managers (AGSM), to launch its Gas Access campaign to stop tenants playing 'Russian roulette' with their and their neighbours' lives by refusing access to gas safety engineers.

The Law requires all landlords to carry out annual safety checks on any properties they own which have gas supplies.

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But, while Local Authorities can get same-day court orders to force entry to properties where tenants refuse access to gas engineers, it can take up to four months for social housing providers to gain access.

Home Group, which manages 55,000 homes across 200 local authorities in the UK, is working with CORGI Technical Services, the UK’s most trusted gas safety provider, and the AGSM, whose members service 2m social homes, to call for a change in the law to give regulated landlords the same timely access as their local authority counterparts.

Mark Henderson, Chief Executive of the Home Group, said: "Current legislation is dangerous and expensive. This has to change now. It is far too difficult for registered and responsible social landlords to gain access to their properties to allow qualified inspectors the time to make appropriate health checks and the requisite servicing of boilers.

"Without being allowed to make those checks, lives are being put at risk - not just the lives of the people in these properties, but the lives of their neighbours too. All we ask is that social landlords be given the same timely access as our colleagues at Local Authorities."

(CD/MH)