Statutory Lettings Compliance Checklist

The Statutory Lettings Compliance Checklist gives you one place to see the UK statutory obligations that apply to a property before it goes to market. It sits on the Compliance tab of a lettings property record, alongside the certificates you already keep.

It is advisory. It never stops you putting a property on the market. You will see a warning at Launch to Market if checks are outstanding, and you can carry straight on past it and launch. There is no point in the feature where Loop blocks you, greys out a button, or asks you to explain yourself. It is there so nothing gets forgotten while you chase the paperwork — not to police you.

What it tracks

Fourteen checks, in three groups:

Ownership & Authority

Health & Safety

Energy & Licensing

Thirteen of the fourteen are switched on to start with. ICO Data Protection Registration is switched off by default — switch it on in Compliance Settings if you want it.

Each row has an information icon. Tap it for a short note on what the obligation actually is: who has to do what, and by when.

Turning it on

The checklist starts switched off. It is set per branch: an administrator turns it on for a branch once, and it then applies to every lettings property belonging to that branch.

1. Go to Settings → Statutory Compliance.
2. If you have access to more than one branch, choose the Branch first. The page shows which branch you are editing.
3. Switch on Track statutory compliance checks.

Repeat for each branch that should use it.

Until then, the Compliance tab shows a grey panel reading Statutory Compliance Checklist is switched off, with a link to Open Compliance Settings.

Who can see it

All lettings users can now see the Compliance tab, not just property-management users. That is a change from before.

Worth knowing on day one: the Compliance tab also holds the certificates list. If your negotiators could not see that tab previously, they can now, and the certificate records will look new to them even though nothing about them has changed.

Using it on a property

Open a lettings property and go to the Compliance tab.

The banner at the top

• Checks outstanding — an amber panel reading, for example, "3 statutory checks outstanding", with a chip for each one. Tap a chip to jump to that row.
• Nothing outstanding — a green line reading "All statutory certificates and checks are complete".

The checklist card

Below the certificates you will find Statutory Lettings Compliance Checklist, with a progress count in its header — for example "9 of 13 complete" — and a progress bar.

Each row shows a status pill on the right. For rows you track by hand, tap the row to move it on:

Not Done → In Progress → Complete → Not Done

Every change saves as you make it. There is no Save button on the property checklist. The checklist and the certificates list above it keep each other up to date: add, edit or delete a certificate and the checklist updates straight away, and the other way round.

How a row gets its status

This is the part most worth understanding, because the same check can behave differently on two properties, or at two agencies, and both are working correctly.

• Read from a certificate

Five of the checks have a matching certificate type in Loop: Gas Safety Certificate (CP12), Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR), PAT Inspection, Legionella Risk Assessment and EPC.

Where your agency tracks that certificate type and it is required on the property, the checklist row reads its status straight from the certificate record. You never enter anything twice. The row shows the same wording as the certificate above it: Valid, Expiring Soon, Expired, Invalid or Missing.

Expiring Soon counts as complete. The certificate is still valid; it is just coming up for renewal.

Adding a certificate makes the check required. If you add a Gas, EICR, PAT or Legionella certificate to a property where that check was marked not required, Loop marks it required again, so the row reads your new certificate. This also happens when a maintenance job is completed with a new certificate. The change is noted in the System Log.

EPC has its own rule — see The EPC row below.

• Not required on that property

If a certificate genuinely does not apply to one property, mark it not required there and the checklist row shows Not required. It stops counting as outstanding and counts towards your progress.

For example: a first-floor flat with no landlord-supplied appliances does not need a PAT inspection.

There are two ways to do it, and both apply to that one property only.

From the checklist — on the Gas, EICR, PAT or Legionella row, click the ⋮ menu and choose Not required on this property. To undo it, choose Required on this property from the same menu.

From the certificates list — find the certificate panel for that type and click Not Required. A Set '(certificate name)' as Optional window opens. Type a Reason and click Proceed.

Either way the change goes to the property's System Log. The certificates list asks for a reason. The ⋮ menu does not, and records "Marked as not required from the statutory checklist" instead.

The ⋮ menu only appears on certificate types your agency tracks. If your agency has switched a type off, the row is tracked by hand instead (see 4 below), and there is nothing to mark.

• Completed by a matching certificate

Three of the hand-tracked checks also complete themselves when you add the right certificate:

Add the certificate in the certificates list, as you normally would. It can sit under Other Certificates; it does not need to be a required type. The row then shows Valid or Expiring Soon, with a link icon. Hover over the icon to see which certificate completed it.

Smoke & CO needs both certificates, because one alone doesn't show that both duties are met. A property with no combustion appliances, which therefore has no carbon monoxide certificate, is ticked by hand as before.

While the certificate is valid, the row can't be ticked by hand. If the certificate expires, the row goes back to whatever was last ticked by hand. So a row ticked Complete before the certificate was added stays Complete.

• Tracked by hand

The other six checks are always tracked by hand: the two Consent to Let checks, Head Lease, Furniture & Furnishings Fire Safety, Landlord Insurance and ICO Data Protection Registration. So are the three above when there's no matching certificate. You tap the row to set it.

And this is the one that surprises people: a certificate-backed row also becomes a plain tick-box if your agency does not track that certificate type at all.

For example: your branch has switched the Legionnaires certificate type off in Certificate Types. The Legionella Risk Assessment row still appears on every property, because the legal duty has not gone away — but instead of reading a certificate it behaves like the manual rows, and you tap it through Not Done → In Progress → Complete yourself.

So the same row can read a certificate at one agency and be a tick-box at another. Nothing is broken. The obligation is always shown; only the way it is tracked changes.

Which checks start as required on a new property

Whether Gas, EICR, PAT, Legionella and EPC start as required on a new property comes from your agency's certificate settings, not from the checklist:

1. Go to Settings → Certificate Types.
2. Tick Required by Default against each type that should start as required.
3. Click Save Types.

This applies to properties created from then on. It does not change properties you already have — use the row's ⋮ menu on those.

Two things worth knowing:

• Leave Required by Default ticked unless you have a reason not to. A check that starts as not required shows Not required before anyone has looked at it. On a compliance checklist, it's safer to have to rule a check out than to have to remember to add it.
• Save Types saves the whole list as it appears on your screen. If two people have the page open, whoever saves second puts back whatever they had on screen, which can undo the first person's change. Reopen the page before making a change.

The EPC row

EPC works differently from every other row, on purpose.

It is complete only when both of these are true:

1. Loop can find an EPC on the property, and
2. someone has confirmed the rating is E or better.

Loop looks for the EPC in three places, in this order: the compliance certificates on this tab, the Media tab's EPC items, and Documents. It finds the first two by itself. Documents are not typed in Loop, so for those you pick the file yourself — click Choose EPC and select it.

Once an EPC is found, tick Min E confirmed. The note under the card then records where the EPC was found, who confirmed the rating and when. The pill reads Min E confirmed, or Rating unconfirmed until you tick it.

Two things to be clear about.

Loop is recording your confirmation, not checking the rating. Loop does not hold the EPC band and cannot verify it. When you tick that box you are stating that you have looked at the EPC and the rating is E or better, and your name goes against it.

There is no way to clear this row without an EPC. Unlike Gas, EICR, PAT and Legionella, the EPC row never falls back to a plain tick-box, and it has no ⋮ menu. With no EPC on the property, the note reads: "No EPC found on this property. Add one as a compliance certificate, to Media, or choose an existing file from Documents — the EPC check cannot be ticked off without one." That is deliberate. On the one check carrying a legal minimum rating, Loop does not accept a bare tick.

Where the warnings appear

Three places, and none of them blocks anything.

• Compliance tab — the banner described above.
• Details tab — a compact panel in the right-hand column listing what is outstanding, with Open the Compliance tab →. If nothing is outstanding, the panel does not appear at all.
• Launch to Market — when you click Launch to Market, the dialog lists the outstanding checks before you confirm.

You can launch straight past it. The panel is there so you know what is still open, not to stop you. Carry on and confirm as normal. It also appears when you put a withdrawn property back on the market.

Not every incomplete row raises a warning

Only these seven count towards the outstanding count:

• Consent to Let (Mortgage)
• Gas Safety Certificate (CP12)
• Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR)
• PAT Inspection
• Legionella Risk Assessment
• Smoke & CO Alarms
• EPC (minimum rating E)

The rest still show on the checklist and still count towards your progress bar, but they will not appear in a warning. Neither will any check your agency adds itself.

Compliance Settings

Settings → Statutory Compliance. These settings apply to every lettings property in the branch you are editing. If you have access to more than one branch, choose it from Branch at the top; otherwise the page shows which branch the settings are for.

• Track statutory compliance checks — the master switch. Turn it off and the checklist disappears from every property record in the branch, and Loop raises no compliance warnings there. The page shows who last changed this and when.
• Tracked — untick a check to remove it from every property in the branch.
• Check — rename a check to whatever your agency calls it. Renaming does not change what the check is or the guidance behind it.
• Reorder — drag the handle on the right to change the order within a group.
• Add your own check — add something your agency cares about that is not on the standard list.

Click Save when you are done.

Five checks are locked

Gas Safety Certificate (CP12), Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR), PAT Inspection, Legionella Risk Assessment and EPC carry a padlock. They can be reordered, but they cannot be renamed and they cannot be untracked.

These are legal duties rather than agency preferences, so switching one off is not something Loop offers. If you want to change how the certificate itself is handled, use Certificate Types — the padlock links you there.

Note that switching a certificate type off in Certificate Types does not remove the checklist row. It turns that row into a manual tick-box, as described above.

Checks you add yourself

Add a check with Add your own check. It appears in its group on every property in the branch and counts towards the progress bar.

A check you add yourself will never raise a warning. It will not appear in the Compliance tab banner, the Details tab panel, or the Launch to Market dialog. If you need something to warn, it has to be one of the standard checks.

How to stop applying a check

There are two different ways to make a check stop applying, and they are not the same thing.

If a check does not apply to one flat, mark it not required on that flat. Only untick something in Compliance Settings if the branch will never track it on any property.

The audit trail

Every change is recorded on the property's System Log tab:

• a statutory check status changing, with the check name, what it moved from and to, who changed it and when
• an EPC rating confirmation, including where the EPC was found
• a certificate being marked not required, with the reason typed at the time (or "Marked as not required from the statutory checklist" when it was done from the ⋮ menu)
• a certificate being marked required again, including when adding a certificate did it

System Log entries show the check's name as it was at the time. If you rename a check later, older entries keep the old name — which is what you want from an audit trail, but worth knowing if you are looking back.

Frequently Asked Question

• Why can I still launch a property with outstanding checks? Because that is how it is designed. The checklist is advisory. Agents have to be able to get a property to market while the paperwork is still being chased, so Loop warns and then gets out of the way.

• PAT says "Not required" but the property is furnished. PAT wasn't set to start as required when the property was created. On this property, use the PAT row's ⋮ menu and choose Required on this property, or simply add the PAT certificate, which does the same. For future properties, tick Required by Default against PAT under Settings → Certificate Types.

• I can't see the ⋮ menu on a row. It's only on Gas, EICR, PAT and Legionella, and only where your agency tracks that certificate type. EPC never has one. A row that's a manual tick-box because the type isn't tracked has nothing to mark.

• I added a Selective Licence and the Landlord Licence row turned green. Can I still tick it? Not while the licence is valid: the certificate completes the row. If the licence expires, the row goes back to whatever was last ticked by hand.

• I added a Smoke Alarms certificate but Smoke & CO is still outstanding. It also needs a valid Carbon Monoxide certificate. If the property has no combustion appliances, tick the row by hand.

• Why is the Legionella row a tick-box for us but reads a certificate at another branch or agency? Because your branch does not track the Legionnaires certificate type. The obligation is still shown, but you set it by hand. An administrator can switch that certificate type on in Settings → Certificate Types if you would rather it read from a certificate.

• Why can't I untick Gas in Compliance Settings? Those five checks are legal duties, so they are always tracked. You can reorder them, and you can mark a certificate not required on an individual property, but you cannot remove them from the branch. 

• The checklist is on for one branch but not another. Settings are per branch. Open Settings → Statutory Compliance, choose the other branch, and switch it on there.

• I added our own check and it never warns. Is it broken? No. Checks you add yourself count towards the progress bar but never raise a warning. Only the seven standard checks listed above do.

• I've ticked Min E confirmed but the EPC row still isn't complete. There will be no EPC on the property. The row needs both an EPC and your confirmation. Add the EPC as a compliance certificate, upload it to Media, or use Choose EPC to point at a file already in Documents.

• A certificate expired and the row went back to outstanding on its own. That is correct. Rows that read from a certificate follow the certificate, so they update themselves as certificates are renewed or lapse. For Landlord Licence, FRA and Smoke & CO, the row goes back to whatever was last ticked by hand.

• Why can my negotiators suddenly see the Compliance tab? The tab is now open to all lettings users rather than property-management users only. That also means they can see the certificates list. Nothing about your certificate records has changed.

• The checklist card shows an error but my certificates are fine. The two are independent, so a problem loading the checklist leaves your certificates working normally. Refresh the page. If it keeps happening, get in touch with us.

• Where do I see who ticked something off? The property's System Log tab.