As you are no doubt aware, it is a legal requirement for anyone working on gas appliances to be Gas Safe registered. The Gas Safe Register is the only official gas registration body of gas businesses and engineers in the UK. The company must be on the register and each engineer working on gas appliances must also be registered.
Therefore, anyone coming to service, repair or install a boiler in your home should be a Gas Safe registered engineer. But are they? A recent court case saw a tradesman fined for undertaking gas work despite not being registered as a Gas Safe engineer. He falsely claimed that he was registered, even signing off gas certificates with false engineer numbers.
Given that this individual must have been quite convincing, how would you know that he was misrepresenting his qualifications to carry out the work? As you would expect, there is a way to check that they are on the Gas Safe Register, but it does require customers to be vigilant and verify their engineer. You can easily do this on the Gas Safe Register website. This will not only confirm that they are on the register but show what aspects of gas work they are qualified to undertake.
Any engineer coming to your home should show their ID before they even enter the house. This should feature their photo, the company they work for, their company’s Gas Safe registration number and their own personal registration number. Of course, this particular individual provided false registration numbers and relied on his customers not checking so it demonstrates how important it is to verify an engineer’s credentials.
This is much more likely to happen with small companies and one-man bands as larger firms have a lot to lose by employing non-registered engineers and no real incentive to do so. (The fines would be significant and the damage to their reputation extensive). However, it is still worth checking.
Aside from it being a legal requirement, The Gas Safe Register is there to keep you safe. There are significant potential dangers associated with gas and carbon monoxide (produced when gas does not burn properly) and being on the register offers peace of mind that the engineer is fully qualified and whose skills have been assessed. A Gas Safe Register investigation revealed that approximately two thirds of illegal gas work is unsafe. Gas Safe engineers are reassessed every 5 years to ensure that their skills and knowledge remains up to date.
It could also invalidate the warranty on the boiler as well as any boiler cover insurance or even house insurance, should it be linked to a claim.
Therefore, the advice is to check the company registration before the engineer comes out and if you want to be particularly vigilant, check the engineer’s registration number when he arrives (making sure it matches their name).
All Plumbcare.com gas engineers are Gas Safe registered and our company registration number is 11595. You can also view a list of our engineers on the Gas Safe Register website.
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Excellent work