Health and safety

Landlords and tenants of commercial premises are responsible for maintaining the premises and for the health and safety of occupants - particularly in areas such as gas and fire safety. Increasingly, statutory provisions impose a specific duty to cooperate where the property is divided into let areas and common parts.

Tenants who employ staff have a general duty to provide a safe environment and system of work and must ensure the workplace meets a number of basic requirements. They include:

• ensuring the temperature is appropriate

• providing sufficient space, ventilation and lighting

• providing suitable sanitation and washing facilities

• providing drinking water

• maintaining equipment

• keeping the premises clean and free of waste

Landlords and managing agents may have a duty to share these responsibilities if they exercise any control over the workplace. This is particularly relevant where several businesses operate in the same building and use common areas. If, for example, there is a service charge for the stairs or for a lift to be cleaned and maintained and for use of toilet facilities, it is likely that the landlord will have responsibility for ensuring compliance with health and safety rules in these areas. In serviced offices or business centres, the landlord may also assume responsibility for regular risk assessments.

Gas safety

Occupiers (whether employers or self-employed people) must ensure that any gas appliance, installation pipework or flue installed in their workplace is maintained in a safe condition. The equipment must be maintained according to the manufacturer's instructions, which will often mean that an annual service by a CORGI-registered engineer is required. While the lease can be helpful in setting out practical arrangements for ensuring these requirements are met, direct legal responsibility remains with the occupier of the workplace.

The landlord or managing agent may also have duties under Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, such as ensuring that heating equipment in common parts is maintained safely. The lease can be used to determine how these responsibilities are allocated.

If any part of the property is occupied for residential purposes, the duties of a residential landlord for gas safety (including the annual safety check) will apply.

Fire safety

Anyone who has control of premises, or some control over part of the premises, is responsible for fire safety and must:

• carry out (and keep up to date) a fire risk assessment, considering the possible risks to all people who could be affected

• take steps to prevent fires - eg ensuring electrical equipment is maintained

• provide fire precautions to safeguard people using the workplace - eg escape routes to a place of safety, fire-resistant doors and walls, fire alarms and fire-fighting equipment

• train staff in fire safety

In commercial premises, the landlord and the tenant normally share these responsibilities. For example, in a multi-occupied office block housing a number of employers, all tenants have responsibilities for those parts of the premises used by their employees. The landlord or managing agent must ensure fire regulations are complied with on common staircases. The landlord or managing agent is responsible for maintaining and checking shared fire safety equipment covering the whole building.

Electrical safety

Responsibility for electrical safety in commercial premises is likely to be decided by the lease which should set out whether the tenant, landlord or managing agent takes on these duties.

Tenant businesses must assess the risks of their use of electricity at work and take steps to control these risks - from ensuring electrical installations are safe and providing suitable equipment to carrying out preventative maintenance and ensuring safe systems of work. However, landlords are likely to have a duty of care for wiring systems and electrical equipment. Landlords should conduct electrical safety checks before leasing a property.

Asbestos

Whoever is responsible for maintaining all or part of a property used as a workplace must manage any asbestos in the premises. Depending on the terms of the lease, this could be the tenant, landlord or managing agent. If maintenance responsibilities are not clearly specified, the legal duty rests with the party having the greatest degree of control over the property. The 'dutyholder' in relation to any part of the property must:

• take reasonable steps to determine the location and condition of materials likely to contain asbestos

• presume materials contain asbestos unless there is strong evidence that they do not

• keep an up-to-date record of the location and condition of the asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) or presumed ACMs in the premises

• assess the risk of the likelihood of anyone being exposed to fibres from these materials

• prepare a plan setting out how the risks from the materials are to be managed

• take the necessary steps to put the plan into action

• review and monitor the plan periodically

• provide information on the location and condition of the materials to anyone who is liable to work on or disturb them, and

• make sure that material is analysed for asbestos content in accordance with ISO17025, which sets standards for both quality management and technical requirements in laboratories

Construction design and management

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007, SI 2007/320 (CDM) were revised in 2007 to place enhanced duties on the 'client' in relation to any construction works. The CDM Regulations 2007 change the definition of 'client' to cover any person who, in the course of a business, either seeks or accepts the services of another that may be used in the carrying out of a project for it or carries out a project itself. The client must now:

• appoint a CDM co-ordinator as soon as possible after the initial design work or other preparation for construction work has begun and appoint a principal contractor after the co-ordinator has been appointed and as soon as practicable once the client knows enough about the project to be able to select a suitable person. The client will automatically be legally liable for both of the duties if it fails to appoint the two parties in time, as well as being legally liable for not having made the appointments

• inform principal contractors and contractors, as part of the pre-construction information, of the minimum amount of time that the client has allowed (before any start on-site) for contractors to plan and prepare for the construction work. This new obligation reflects the increased emphasis on client responsibility for controlling time and budgetary resources. The CDM Approved Code of Practice indicates that 'planning and preparing' covers issues such as mobilising the workforce and arranging welfare facilities

• take reasonable steps throughout the life of the project to ensure that the management arrangements of the duty holders are suitable so as to enable the work to be carried out safely

As with the previous version of CDM, the twin objectives are to promote health and safety while the project is being carried out, and also to produce a health and safety file to be handed over to any subsequent owner or occupier of the property so that future projects can be risk-assessed on a properly informed basis.