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Question Title: Gas installer qualifications
| Question: 93 |
| I have checked with the gas installer who carries out gas safety checks for us. He says that he is not CORGI registered but has papers from HITB and has passed the ACoP training. Can we continue to use him ?
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| Answer: |
| We put the issue to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). They advised us: The Gas Safety Regulations specify that the gas installer (applying either to a business or self-employed person) is required by law to be CORGI registered in order to work on gas appliances and carry out the safety checks. Where the gas installer is a business, it has a duty to ensure that any employee is competent to carry out the work. This year, the HSE acted to plug one of the main loopholes - that individual installers employed by a CORGI registered installer were not always competent to work on gas appliances, and that landlords had no way of knowing if any particular gas engineer was appropriately qualified. A new Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) was introduced in January 1998, which set out the standards of competence for gas engineers, and all gas engineers should be tested under the new tests by August 1998. In order to simplify the situation, and demonstrate to customers that a gas engineer is competent, CORGI introduced an ID scheme for gas fitters in April 1998. Agents and landlords should ask gas installers to produce their ID cards to verify CORGI membership and competence. Going back to your problem, if the particular gas engineer is employed by a gas installation business, then he does not have to be CORGI-registered (although the gas installation business does). The engineer must, however be able to demonstrate competence (e.g. by producing his CORGI ID card or a certificate of competence). If, on the other hand, he is self-employed, then he must be CORGI-registered, and again have a CORGI ID card or certificate of competence.
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References:
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Pages:
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Hyperlinks:
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Letting Update Journal |
April 2000 page 13 |
letting-update-journal.html
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Letting Handbook |
Chapter 8 |
letting-handbook-and-factsheets.html
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Letting Factsheet No 7 |
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factsheet-7
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For more information, discuss on the Forum
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