This week is Gas Safety Week and, despite modern appliances being safer than ever before, it's still essential to have your appliances both at home and at work checked once a year.

To mark Gas Safety Week, our friends over at British Gas carried out a study which shows an alarmingly low number of homes and businesses have had their appliances checked in the last year.

The number of respondents who had not had their appliances checked in the past year by region is as follows:

• Wales 33%
• Yorkshire and the Humber 30%
• East/East Anglia 29%
• West Midlands 26%
• Scotland 24%
• North West 24%
• East Midlands 24%
• London 22%
• South East 21%
• South West 20%
• North East 14%

This infographic, produced by British Gas as part of the study, explains why addressing this problem is more important than you might think.

If you need to get your appliances checked, don't worry, there's a Local Hero for that.