Which gas safety records must a tenant receive for a section 21 notice to be valid? Andrew Burrell discusses the recent case of Muca v El Amrani [2026] EWCA Civ 515.
On 1 May 2026, ‘no fault evictions’ under the Housing Act 1988, section 21, were abolished.
With it, one of the knottiest questions in housing law is about to come to an end – just exactly which gas safety records must a landlord give a tenant before serving a section 21 notice?
But by way of a parting gift, the day before (on 30 April), the Court of Appeal handed down Muca v El Amrani, providing welcome, albeit belated, guidance on that question.
Legal framework
Under the Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015/1646 [now repealed reg 2(1)(b)] it was a precondition of serving a section 21 notice that a landlord must have complied with regulations 36(6)-(7) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998.
On its face, regulation 36(6) is a two-limbed duty:
- Limb A requires landlords to provide a copy of a gas safety record to each existing tenant following an annual safety check.
- Limb B requires landlords to provide a copy of the most recent gas safety record to any new tenant before that tenant first occupied the premises.
The interplay of the Gas Safety Regulations with section 21 vexed County Court judges for years.
Yes, the AST Regulations said you did not need to provide the gas safety records within 28 days of the check. [reg 2(2), now repealed] But did that mean you could provide them years later?
The Court of Appeal gave some initial guidance in Trecarrell House v Rouncefield. By a majority, it held that possession proceedings could be valid if the gas safety records were served on the tenant at any point before the section 21 notice was served, regardless of the date of the check to which they related.
Yet the facts of Trecarrell House left 2 big questions unanswered.
- What if no check had been done before the tenant moved in, or the check was never recorded? Was that an absolute bar on serving a section 21 notice?
- How many and which records of gas safety checks conducted during the tenancy must the landlord prove they served?
The decision in Muca v El Amrani
In Muca v El Amrani, the Court of Appeal gave a decisive answer to the first question and gave clues as to the second.
The landlords offered 3 different alternatives for how to interpret the regulations, each of which the Court of Appeal rejected.
- Interpretation 1 was that landlords need only provide the most recent gas safety record. This was rejected as effectively excluding Limb B.
- Interpretation 2 was that Limb B applies afresh each time the tenancy renews or becomes periodic. This would mean that Limb B only required landlords to serve the record from before the most recent tenancy, not the record from before the tenant first moved in under the original tenancy. This was seen as contrary to the natural meaning of regulation 36(6).
- Interpretation 3 was taken from a Reading County Court judgment in October 2025 called Cassell v Sidhu. HHJ Melissa Clarke had held that landlords only needed to provide the 2 most recent gas safety records, because regulation 36(3)(c) of the Gas Safety Regulations only required a landlord to keep copies of a gas safety record until 2 further checks had been completed. The Court of Appeal rejected that too because there was no reference to regulation 36(3)(c) in either the AST Regulations or regulation 36(6) of the Gas Safety Regulations.
Therefore, the court’s answer to the first question was “yes”. If no gas check was conducted before the tenant moved in, or if no record of it was ever made or served on the tenant, that was fatal to a section 21 claim.
The second question did not arise on the facts of either of the 2 conjoined appeals in Muca. However, some inferences can be drawn.
First, the reasoning in Cassell v Sidhu for why the answer to this question is, 'you must serve the most recent two records,' has likely been dealt a fatal blow with the rejection of Interpretation 3.
It may well be that the answer is instead, 'you need only serve the pre-occupancy record and the most recent one.' Some passages of the judgment seem to imply this, such as paragraph 61, where Newey LJ refers to a landlord serving 'a pre-occupation certificate and […] a further certificate' (emphasis in original).
Yet 3 paragraphs later, he notes that the Interpretation Act 1978 provides that references in legislation to the singular are taken to include the plural unless the contrary is shown. Newey LJ uses this to explain how the AST Regulations refer to “multiple certificates and records”, such as both a pre-occupancy and a post-occupancy record. Yet if that is the case, surely Limb A could be interpreted in the same way – it could be a requirement to serve copies of “the record[s]”, plural, of checks conducted during the tenancy. This would lead to the conclusion that landlords must serve every gas safety record produced since the tenant moved in.
Practical implications for landlords
Under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, landlords can still bring possession proceedings under the Housing Act 1988, section 21, until the end of July, if they served a valid section 21 notice before 1 May 2026.
If they choose to do so, the Court of Appeal has now made clear that they will need to prove that they served, at some point before the section 21 notice, a gas safety record for a check conducted before the tenant first occupied the property. It would be prudent to also provide evidence of the service of the records of every gas safety check conducted since then as well.