A smoke or carbon monoxide alarm fails during a tenancy: what to do next

When a tenant reports that a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm is not working, treat it as a live safety issue, not an item for the next inspection. Establish whether the report points to a dead alarm or to a possible carbon monoxide leak, restore working protection quickly, and record what you did. In England the landlord must repair or replace a faulty alarm once informed.

What has happened

A tenant calls, emails or logs a report: a smoke alarm is chirping, silent when tested, hanging off the ceiling, or a carbon monoxide alarm is sounding or showing a fault. The alarm may simply have a flat battery or reached end of life, or the CO alarm may be doing its job and warning of a real leak. The distinction drives everything that follows. Under the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015, as amended in 2022, a landlord must provide at least one smoke alarm on every storey with living accommodation and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed combustion appliance (excluding gas cookers), ensure they work at the start of each tenancy, and repair or replace them once told they are faulty. Since 1 October 2022 these duties apply to relevant social rented homes as well as private ones.

Immediate actions

First triage the report. If a carbon monoxide alarm is sounding, or anyone reports headaches, dizziness, nausea or drowsiness, treat it as an emergency: tell the resident to stop using fuel-burning appliances, ventilate, leave the property if they feel unwell and call the emergency services or the gas emergency line as appropriate. That is a suspected CO incident, not a routine alarm repair. If the report is a chirping or dead alarm with no signs of CO, arrange a prompt repair or replacement and, where safe and appropriate, advise the resident on any interim step such as fitting a fresh battery in a battery model. Confirm which alarms exist, where, and whether other alarms in the property are working, because one failure may indicate the set needs review.

What not to do

Do not defer the fix to a future planned visit or gas check, and do not treat a sounding CO alarm as a nuisance to be silenced. Do not assume the tenant can simply "sort the battery" and close the report without confirming a working alarm is in place. Do not rely on a verbal "it's fine now" as evidence. And do not narrow the response to the one alarm named if the pattern suggests the wider set is at end of life.

Who is responsible

The landlord holds the statutory duty to provide and maintain the required alarms and to repair or replace them once informed of a fault; a managing agent may discharge this under the management agreement, but the underlying duty rests with the landlord. The resident's role is to test alarms periodically and report faults, and to allow reasonable access for repair. Where a suspected CO leak involves a gas appliance, a Gas Safe registered engineer is needed for the appliance itself.

Evidence and records

Record the date and time of the report, what was reported, the triage decision (routine fault versus suspected CO), the action taken, the date a working alarm was confirmed, and the make, position and type of alarm installed. Keep photographs where helpful and note any access difficulty and the attempts made to resolve it. This record shows the duty was met and supports the start-of-tenancy working-order requirement at the next let.

Escalation

Escalate a suspected carbon monoxide leak immediately to the emergency services or gas emergency service and isolate the suspect appliance. Escalate an unresolved access problem through your formal access route rather than leaving a known fault open. If a CO alarm activation is linked to a gas appliance found unsafe, follow the unsafe gas appliance response. A local authority can serve remedial notices and arrange works in default where alarm duties are not met, so an open, evidenced repair record matters.

Prevention

Move from reactive to planned: record each alarm's type, location and expiry, replace at end of life rather than on failure, confirm working order at every new tenancy and after works, and make it easy for residents to report faults. A simple asset record with expiry dates turns a scramble into a scheduled renewal and gives you the evidence trail if a fault is ever disputed.

Where Complys can help

Complys is compliance-tracking software for landlords and property managers: it can hold each property's alarm inventory, certificates, expiry dates and repair history, surface what is due or overdue, and keep the report-to-repair trail in one place. It does not replace a competent electrician, gas engineer or the emergency services, and it cannot detect carbon monoxide; the physical safety decisions stay with the responsible people. Ask the Complys team to show the property-record and reminder workflow against one real alarm-fault example.