gas safe still got no bite / people are stupid :(

[hammers4spanner]

The only way anything will change is if enough people die in a short period of time all from illegal installs

You could make it change if a no confidence petition was signed but would need about 100 k engineers to sign it.

Doubt the majority will care tho .

 

[Riley]

Exactly. That would also involve the government admitting that the wrong company were appointed which won't happen

 

[TFGplumbing]

currently its more of a licence scheme in the guise of a competent person scheme.

 

[REDSAW]

You could make it change if a no confidence petition was signed but would need about 100 k engineers to sign it.

Doubt the majority will care tho .

i dont think in this case it has to be 100k as its sort of closed shop ie. not general consensous to the public!
i also think that the majority/51% is enough to swing national focus.

the 'register' to me is like the guy at the car boot gate charging you a quid just to let you buy something and charging the vendors to sell you something! in effect, he does feck all but without paying you wont get feckall!
create a hole in the fence and thats where all the illegals get in.
stop going and the 'car boot' no longer operates. complain in numbers to the council and it gets shut down or told to improve!🙂

 

[Ray Stafford]

But based on the news and HSE reports there are near misses and the occasional death more often than I think they'd like to admit. Funny how we never hear the follow up to it. Makes you wonder if it's just brushed under the carpet almost as if the don't want to or can't deal with it

I'm going to take the unpopular position here.

Regardless of what individual experiences may be, or what anecdotal evidence may be quoted, the overall statistics suggest that CORGI did a good job, and that GASSAFE continue to improve the situation.

Lets start from the basics. The job of Gas Safe is to make (pardon the obvious) GAS SAFE.

That is to say, its job is to protect the public from harm caused by gas.

We have quite a good system of autopsy and inquest in the UK, and when someone dies of CO poisoning or as a consquence of an explosion the cause is usually identified and recorded.

Here is a graph showing deaths from CO poisoning by all fuel types, by Mains Gas, and by gas explosion.



We also record "near misses" - hospitalisations, losses of consciousness etc due to CO poisoning. These figures are not quite so accurate because of improvements in diagnosis and reporting standards, and so probably understates the improvement.


If I were GasSafe, I would argue firmly on my track record. If you want them to make a change to their current way of working, you have to demonstrate that your proposed new policy will be more effective in preventing deaths and near-misses than the current approach.

Don't forget the law of unintended consequences. Restricting sales to GSR (which is an impractical idea for reasons I have bored the forum with before) only prevents the idiot landlord from buying a brand new kosher appliance from a reputable dealer. It does not prevent him from purchasing an old wreck from ebay or down the pub, or indeed from connecting up the gas cooker with garden hose, because no-one will sell him a proper cooker hose. It is entirely possible that a well meaning restriction on the sale of parts will result in MORE death and injury than the current situation.

Having talked at length to a leading campaigner on CO deaths, I am told that there is little correlation between the (thankfully quite small) number of deaths, and the registration status of the installer. In many cases the killer appliances have been neglected and untouched by any engineer for many years. In other cases, sadly, even registered GSRs do stupid things sometimes. So whilst it might be intuitive to think that 100% GSR registration compliance would lead to zero deaths, unfortunately, this is unlikely to prove to be the case.

Yesterday, I was with a well known boiler manufacturer and talking about this issue. He was telling me that in the future, he expected that setting up new appliances may require an app on the engineers phone, which would link to the appliance, either by bluetooth or hard-wire, or wi-fi. In any event, restricting the app (for instance to work only if registered to a current GSR) would prevent installation and commissioning by unregistered engineers. This would seem an excellent way forward - better even than my smart card idea mentioned in earlier posts.

But sadly, some people will still die.

 

[Riley]

Totally agree with all you say Ray, my issue comes where Gas Safe do not protect the industry. Bodgitt & Legitt can still install an illegal boiler and essentially they are stealing food off the table of everyone here who has a yellow badge to their name on here.

I think everyone on this thread has made valid contribution but I can't help feeling that recording and reporting back is letting the industry down. I'm not trying to say that gas safe are necessarily a large corrupt organisation but the same thing was brought up with multiple police forces across the country recently when crimes were being recorded or classified intentionally wrongly in order to help the stats. Knife crime was one I remember and many forces had been completely reclassifying it so that they could say knife crime was on the fall however another lesser crime was on the rise, but as the government were targeting knife crime everyone was happy.

I just struggle to believe that after seeing some of the appalling brand new installs I have recently that issues are on the fall. If anything I'm seeing more and more each week. There is the argument that new appliances are "too safe" (new boilers specifically) obviously not a terrible thing as it keeps people safer when we aren't having to worry about ventilation and the like but all the same they should be installed and set up correctly by a gas safe engineer. I can't remember how many builders and diyers that have called me in the last 12 months asking me to come and commission this or that or "just connect the gas". It needs regulating full stop. Whether it be by app or our gas safe cards attach via chip and pin to the appliance we have to stop people DIYing and thinking it's clever. Problem with these sorts is that they are the type that would tell their friends how easy it is and look how much money I've saved.

I don't mean to rant but I'm getting sick of losing jobs where I'm being undercut by the unqualified. To another engineer fair enough as that's business but not these idiots with a total disregard for the safety of themselves and others

 

[Ray Stafford]

my issue comes where Gas Safe do not protect the industry.

I don't think that its their job to protect the industry Matt.

Gas safe is a public safety organisation, not the trade union for gas engineers.

The figures that I quoted were compiled by an independent charity campaigning for carbon monoxide safety, set up I believe by the parent of a child who died from CO poisoning, so they gave little to gain by understating statistics.

LPG and solid fuel are responsible for far more deaths in proportion to the commonness of the fuel type, which may be for a variety of reasons - I suspect that people with boats and caravans tend towards unwise DIY, and probably people under-rate the risk of solid fuel.

If you really want to save lives, then campaign for mandatory smoke and CO alarms in all domestic property.

If you want to campaign on behalf of gas engineers, thats also a perfectly legitimate thing to do, and I would happily support you, but not to the extent of encouraging restrictive business practices based on safety claims that are not supported by the facts.

 

[Riley]

I understand your point Ray and I do agree. I am 100% with you that you can't restrict sales. I just feel that by gas safe actually clamping down on the illegals then vicariously they are protecting the industry, even if they don't call it that.

I do push CO alarms but the uptake is so negative because people just see it as another expense. A landlord actually turned round to me and said he wouldn't pay for them in his properties as the fire service would install them for free. All people see are pound signs rather than what these products could actually save them in the long term ie their lives.

Please don't think I'm belittling the solid fuels and oil as I can only talk about what I know. I'm just seeing such an increase in clearly DIY carp installs that I cannot believe figures are improving. Fatalities perhaps and near misses, which again is a good thing but I don't think they're anywhere even close to getting rid of the illegal fitters nor do they seem to be making it a priority

Just my opinion of course and I know not everyone will agree

 

[quality]

In the refrigeration industry, regulation came into force 01/01/2015 to prevent non register persons from buying refrigerant which has got rid of the average gas ago brigade, something similar should be done in the gas industry but I don't believe that's its gas safes job to do it gisur maybe

 

[REDSAW]

i like the idea for your gas safe card to have a chip in it covering your appliances and if that was coupled to the pcb of a boiler to commision it etc. couild be used over counters too for one price, another if you dont have one££££.
the grid have special cards for meters, if we had one to be able to turn meter/appliance on off. just possibilities!!

 

[Riley]

Technology is there mate it will just depend how much the manufacturers want to solve the problem