Interesting one:
One of our clients has a large number of domestic rental properties that were tested previously by others. It doesn't sound like he knew what he was doing and there are various basic errors strewn throughout most of the reports. Crucially though, he's put a 3 year next inspection recommendation (instead of the obvious 5 year for a rental property) on all the reports.
I appreciate that this is only a recommendation based on what the inspector feels is relevant, though I'd be interested to know any thoughts on where that would that leave the client from a legal perspective if something did occur on one of their sites? My first thought was that as he's clearly wrong (probably trying to generate work for himself) then the client could ignore the expiry date on the reports. But thinking about it a bit more, where does this put them if an incident did occur within the next 2 years? Would they still be classed as expired reports, even though the dates are all demonstrably incorrect?
Surely they shouldn't have to foot the bill for having their sites tested earlier than required, just because the previous testers exclusively put the wrong dates down?
