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I see one of the television shopping channels has now disappeared, I use to tune in to watch the tat they selling. Ended up being the equivalent of a pound shop, yet by the time you paid for postage and the premium rate telephone call, you would have spent £15..... 

The only body that monitors gas safety in the UK is the Gas Safe Register which is operated by Capita the same bods that collect the congestion charge. Previously it was CORGI who had the remit to manage gas safety. Now it will always be known as the Gas Safe Register regardless of which organisation is running it. The Gas Safe Register enforces the rules and regulations laid down by the Health & Safety Executive and monitors registered installers by carrying out periodic inspections of everyone, however you generally will only ever get inspected following a complaint, I've had 2 complaints in 30 years one of them was because a boiler was not working 2 years after I had visited the property and the owner wanted it fixed, even though he fitted it himself. And the second one was because I subcontracted and installation to another registered installer and he failed to install a condense pipe correctly.

Going back to the topic, the Gas Safe inspectors when not inspecting registered installers are chasing illegal unregistered installers and dodgy landlords and alongside the HSE as it is always the HSE who prosecute not Gas Safe either issue prohibition notices to stop work or court summonses, generally this is builders or handymen or it could even be someone who is registered with Gas Safe but they are working on appliances which are beyond their competence level and are not certified to work on.

So because of their workload I cannot see them wanting to get involved with consumer protection, simply because they are already struggling. Unlike the electrical trade where there are several registered bodies that monitor electrical safety, with gas there is just one.....

Originally Posted by Steve Richardson

Am I the only one that thinks this country has too many bank holidays and disruption 

I'm afraid so.....

Trouble with those Cornish bods is that they can no longer afford what once used to be their own homes, its only the London city slickers who can do that now......

I have to agree with Trena, see Gas Safe will not get involved, simply because their remit is solely to do with gas safety, why would they want to get involved with more paperwork and administration? Now I can become an approved contractor, started to do the application last year, but there are now so many bodies acting as agents for the approved scheme, I think I was being quoted somewhere near £700 per annum to become so called approved and the only thing I could see of benefit was to be able to use a logo. The customers I guess are slightly better protected but that was about it. Something didn't seem right to me, so I backed out.

This is exactly my point, some boilers I purchase can cost in the region of £10k. If it happened once I'd cope, twice then it's all over. And over for no other reason than because a customer has decided they don't like it. To be honest, if it did happened I'd tell the customer where to go and take me to court

I would have thought everyone in the chain is a consumer.

Yeah, it's alright for you country bumpkins swanning around the countryside in your 4x4s

took me over 2 hrs this morning to do around 6 miles

So, the customer orders a boiler from me, I order the boiler from the merchant, the merchant orders the boiler from the distributor, the distributor orders the boiler from the manufacturer. Customer then has the right to cancel up to 14days even if it is fitted and plumbed in. I assume that businesses have the same legal rights, so I would then have to back it to the merchant, who would then have to return it to the distributor, who in turn would return it to the manufacturer. Who would no doubt at this stage stick it in a skip........ 

After today, I think I'd rather have a teachers than a tube strike....