It is tempting to think that calls for someone to do something about the ‘cowboys’ working on gas appliances have only been around since the launch of the Gas Safe Register last year but, as anyone who has been in the industry for any amount of time will tell you, concern about those working illegally is almost as old as the industry itself.
Gas Safe Register is working in a variety of different ways to combat illegal gas work.
The image of an illegal gas worker may be someone who has never been qualified, is slapdash and who undercuts the registered engineer by doing a £50 cash-in-hand-job they pick up down the pub, but the reality is that the definition needs to be much broader, and some of it may make for uncomfortable reading.
Who is illegal?
When Gas Safe Register conducted research into illegal gas working last year it was the first time anyone had any real and credible figures for the scale of the problem. The numbers were sobering: a hard core of 7,500 illegal workers and an estimated 250,000 illegal gas jobs carried out every year.
While the research drew attention to this hard core of installers, there are also other factors to take into account.
Often, gas work has been carried out by an engineer working outside of scope – either because they do not have the appropriate qualifications or because their registration is tied to the company they work for and not their own. In the eyes of the law these people are operating illegally – however hard they may protest.
Gas Safe Register also hears about too many cases where a registered engineer has been asked to sign-off work which has been undertaken by someone else.
The registered engineer’s justification for agreeing is often that “I know him; he used to be registered, he knows what he’s doing”.
Not only does this approach put the public at risk (how sure are you that an unregistered engineer has kept up to date with changes in regulations or technical updates?) but it also makes the registered engineer responsible for the whole job, even the parts they have not carried out but merely ‘signed off’.
If they can’t be completely sure that all of the work has been carried out properly they are putting their professional reputation, and potentially their own registration, at risk.
The public are getting the message about the importance of only using a suitably-qualified registered engineer for gas work but the whole industry, including those on the front line, have a role to play in educating them as to what that actually means and doing the right thing themselves.
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