Commercial Property Compliance Checklist: Every Legal Duty for Landlords and Tenants
- Every non-domestic premises carries at least four statutory duties: a fire risk assessment, maintained fire equipment, a safe electrical installation and a legionella risk assessment.
- The rest depend on the building: gas appliances, asbestos in pre-2000 buildings, air conditioning over 12kW, and an EPC of at least E to let.
- Responsibility follows control, not ownership. Tenants usually carry the duties inside their demise, landlords carry common parts and the fabric.
- Each duty needs a record. The record is what you show an insurer, a buyer or an inspector, and the gaps are usually in the paperwork, not the building.
Ask the owner of a commercial building what compliance it needs and you will usually get three answers: fire, electrics, maybe gas. The real list is longer, and the duties that get missed are the ones that cost most when an inspector, an insurer or a buyer asks for the paperwork. This is the full checklist for a commercial property in England and Wales, with the law behind each duty, how often it falls due and who carries it. Use it to audit a building you own or occupy, or run our free compliance check and let it do the sorting for you.
1. Fire risk assessment
Law: the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Applies to: every non-domestic premises. Who: the responsible person, which is the employer for a workplace and the person in control for other premises. How often: reviewed regularly and whenever the building or its use changes; annual review is the norm.
Since October 2023 the assessment must be recorded in full, whatever the size of the business. It drives everything else in fire safety: the alarm, the lighting, the extinguishers, the escape routes and the training. Our guide to the fire risk assessment duty covers it in detail, and the service page gets you a quote.
2. Fire-fighting equipment maintained
Law: the Fire Safety Order, article 17. Applies to: every premises with extinguishers, alarms or emergency lighting. How often: an annual basic service of extinguishers to BS 5306-3, with extended service at five years (ten for CO2); alarms and emergency lighting on their own schedules.
The records of each service are part of your fire safety evidence. See extinguisher servicing.
3. Electrical installation (EICR)
Law: regulation 4 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989. Applies to: every workplace with a fixed electrical installation. How often: no fixed interval in law; a periodic inspection every five years is the accepted norm for most commercial premises, sooner for higher-risk uses.
The Electrical Installation Condition Report is how you evidence the duty. Portable equipment is covered by the same regulation and is handled separately through PAT testing. Our guide to the commercial EICR explains the report.
4. Gas appliances and pipework
Law: regulation 35 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. Applies to: any premises with gas appliances, pipework or flues. How often: no fixed commercial interval; annual inspection by a Gas Safe registered engineer with the right commercial categories is the recognised standard, recorded on a CP17 or, for catering, a CP42.
5. Legionella risk assessment
Law: the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and COSHH, applied through HSE’s Approved Code of Practice L8. Applies to: every premises with a water system, which is every premises. How often: the assessment is reviewed regularly, commonly every two years, with monitoring in between.
This is the duty most owners of small offices do not know they have. The assessment is proportionate: a simple system gets a simple assessment. See legionella risk assessment.
6. Asbestos: the duty to manage
Law: regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. Applies to: non-domestic buildings built or refurbished before 2000. Who: whoever has the maintenance obligation under the lease, which is often the landlord for the fabric and the tenant for their fit-out. How often: a management survey once, then a register and plan reviewed regularly, and a refurbishment survey before any works.
See asbestos surveys and our guide to the duty to manage.
Run the free compliance check
Seven questions about your property. We list every duty that applies and get you a quote for each one you need.
7. EPC and the minimum energy standard
Law: the Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations 2012 and the minimum energy efficiency standard. Applies to: any building being built, sold or let. How often: an EPC lasts ten years; the minimum rating to let is E, and the penalties for letting below it reach £150,000 per property.
See commercial EPCs and our guide to the MEES rules.
8. Air conditioning (TM44)
Law: the Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations 2012. Applies to: systems with a combined output over 12kW. How often: an inspection at least every five years, plus F-Gas compliant servicing.
See air conditioning inspections.
9. Washrooms, waste and the workplace
Law: the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, with the duty of care for waste under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Applies to: every workplace. What it means: suitable sanitary facilities, sanitary waste disposed of through a licensed carrier, and the building, its equipment and systems kept in efficient working order and good repair.
The maintenance duty is where a planned maintenance survey and a maintenance contract earn their keep.
Who is responsible for what
Responsibility follows control. In a single-let building the tenant, as employer and occupier, carries most of the duties inside the demise, and the landlord carries whatever it has kept control of, typically the structure, common parts and shared plant. In a multi-let building the landlord carries the common parts and each tenant carries its own space. The lease sets the detail, and where it is silent both sides should agree the split in writing. Our guides to landlord responsibilities and tenant responsibilities work through each side.
Checking your own building
The quickest way to apply this list to a specific property is the ComSurv compliance check: seven questions about the building, then a list of every duty that applies, tagged as a legal duty or a recommendation, with a quote for each one you want. It takes about a minute and there is no obligation.
Sources & further reading
- Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 — the fire safety duties on the responsible person
- Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, regulation 4 — electrical systems maintained to prevent danger
- Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, regulation 35 — gas appliances at work maintained safely
- Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, regulation 4 — the duty to manage asbestos
- HSE: Legionnaires’ disease, ACoP L8 — controlling legionella in water systems
- GOV.UK: non-domestic minimum energy efficiency standard — the EPC rules for letting
- Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 — maintenance, washrooms and welfare
External links open in a new tab. ComSurv is a matching service, not a firm of surveyors, and is not affiliated with these organisations. This article is general information, not legal, surveying or valuation advice; take advice on your specific situation.
