Gas Safety Register
Introduction
As a house-owner you have a responsibility to yourself and the residents in your home to ensure that your gas fittings and appliances are safe.
- It is very important that gas appliances are installed and regularly checked for safety by a Gas Safe Registered installer. The Gas Safety Register recommends that you arrange safety checks on an annual basis.
Although these recommendations are not enforceable, there are around 30 deaths in the UK every year, and hundreds of serious injuries caused by carbon monoxide poisoning due to faulty gas appliances and flues.
Why use a Gas Safe Registered installer?
When contacting a gas installer to carry out your annual check or install a gas appliance for you, you must always use a Gas Safe Registered installer. This is because;
- Gas Safe Registered installers have to undertake high levels of training in order to work with gas.
- Non-registered installers are breaking the law.
- If your installer is not registered then you have no guarantee that they have the necessary competencies or gas safety awareness that are required to carry out the job safely.
- A significant amount of gas work carried out by non-registered installers has been found to have serious safety defects.
And if those aren't good enough reasons, then using a non-registered installer can also jeopardise the validity of your home insurance, in the event of an incident caused by a faulty gas appliance. This is subject to the individual conditions set by your insurance company.
The Gas Safe Register ID card
All Gas Safe Registered installers must carry an ID card and have it available to show to you when they are working in your home.
The card shows that the installer is competent to do the job and details the types of gas work in which the installer is qualified. The Gas Safe Register provide the cards so that consumers have a quick and easy way of checking that the installer is registered, as required by law, and is able to carry out the requested work.
- The card contains a photograph of the operative, their unique license number and the Gas Safe Register logo. You can check that the card is valid via the Gas Safe Register website. The reverse of the card contains details of the different types of gas work the operative is competent to undertake.
Further information and useful links
- Find a Gas Safe Registered Engineer near you
- Check your Gas Safe Registered installer (gassaferegister.co.uk)
- Gas Regulations (odpm.gov.uk)
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