Petition

[Atouchofgas]

Interesting on the gas app tonight
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/167328

 

[rpm]

How is that going to work for sellers like Ray selling say 50 boilers in one go to big companies?

Don`t get me wrong as other than that I agree and would sign if I could.

 

[townfanjon]

Signed

 

[snowhead]

The petition won't do much to improve safety.

Presenting a Card makes no difference unless the customer is obliged to check the details with Gassafe. It could still be a fake.

How can a Company present a card number as part of a contract when the card holder may not be employed with them at the time of the work.?

 

[Rich8]

Signed

 

[Chalked]

Good intentions, but impossible to implement. What would stop me buying a boiler and selling it on? And merchants would have to be gas safe registered.


Not signed

 

[AlexGas]

And what about the online shopping!?

 

[ShaunCorbs]

How is that going to work for sellers like Ray selling say 50 boilers in one go to big companies?

Don`t get me wrong as other than that I agree and would sign if I could.

The way I read aslong as the company there selling to is gas safe your fine / Ray is

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Good intentions, but impossible to implement. What would stop me buying a boiler and selling it on? And merchants would have to be gas safe registered.


Not signed

May I ask why would they need to be gas safe ?

 

[Chalked]

May I ask why would they need to be gas safe ?

You may Shaun :45:

I'm totally for protecting the customer from rouge, non gas safe installers.

But what if I buy a boiler and show my gas safe details. Then just sell it to someone else. Who would catch me? I sell them to customers anyway ( install and invoice) but just the same.
What about fires and cookers?
I would like it to work, but can't see it.

 

[rpm]

Are the big house builders registered or am I talking nonsense?

 

[1Steven]

Would love to see land lord safety certificate's registered!

 

[ShaunCorbs]

You may Shaun :45:

I'm totally for protecting the customer from rouge, non gas safe installers.

But what if I buy a boiler and show my gas safe details. Then just sell it to someone else. Who would catch me? I sell them to customers anyway ( install and invoice) but just the same.
What about fires and cookers?
I would like it to work, but can't see it.

well that could happen and then i would think the only way gas safe could find out who is tally your card with the serial no of the boiler you sold etc

but then its more work for the seller / supplier

 

[Ray Stafford]

I hope you will forgive me for posting material I wrote previously, but its a lot to re-type!

I have been thinking about this issue, and have discussed it endlessly over nearly 30 years.

There are three basic factors here:

Enforceability
Equivalences
Proportionality

Enforceability is a problem for several reasons. The biggest one are that the majority of the sales of gas appliances are not to registered installers, but are still perfectly legitimate. They are either sales down the supply chain (ie, Manufacturer > Distributor > Merchant) or sales to organisations who quite reasonably want to purchase the materials, despite having no intention of fitting them illegally. A large proportion of our sales are to Councils, HAs, Universities, MOD establishments and a whole range of other public and private non-GSR organisations. There is also the issue of whether a particular item is a "gas product" or not. Lots of things are dual purpose.

Equivalence presents another issue. If we seek such protection for the sale of items related to our industry, we must expect other industries to make similar arguments for equally draconian regulation. So sorry, you can't wire your own plug, maintain your own car, mend your own roof, or even use your own sex-toys! Poorly maintained cars kill FAR more people than poorly maintained gas appliances, and more people are hurt doing DIY up ladders on their own house than are affected by CO poisoning. Hospital A&E departments regularly have to remove objects from orifices in which they have no place being, and this would never happen if they were only sold to competent sex-workers.

Finally, we have proportionality. Starting from the point that "its a free country", as a society we accept a range of limits on our freedom for the collective good. We accept quite stringent limits on things like the practice of medicine, ownership of firearms or explosives because of the high likelihood of frequent unpleasant consequences if we don't. Moving down the chain of potential risk, we regulate bus and truck drivers more than car drivers because the consequences of their failures are greater.

At the bottom of the regulatory pyramid are the activities that merely require you to be a certain age, and consenting - like drinking alcohol, smoking, having sex or joining the armed forces. They key to this is proportionality - the degree of regulation is proportionate to the frequency and severity of the harm that would ensue in the absence of regulation. Increasing the level of regulation on the gas appliance market would simply be disproportionate - the benefits do not outweigh the costs.

And before someone comes out with the old argument "surely its worth it, if just a single life is saved...?" Nope. On that basis we would have a speed limit on all roads of 20mph which would pretty much eliminate road deaths. But the cost is unacceptably high.

So, much as I understand the sentiment, I absolutely don't support legal limits on the sale of gas appliances. Or electrical fittings. Or car parts. Or ladders.

Or sex toys.

Since writing that piece, I did some more research into the topic, and wrote a little more...

Firstly, the actual body count for CO poisoning or gas explosions relating to Natural Gas is very small these days. LPG and Solid fuel account for more or less the same actual deaths, which bearing in mind the ratio of NG installs to LPG/SF installs is a terrible indictment.

Secondly, talking to a lady who runs the country's main CO charity, its by no means clear that GSRs are as careful as we would like to think. A number of the near misses and some of the deaths are the result of errors by qualified blokes, so enforcing GSR at any point would not eliminate problems. A good percentage of problems are caused by appliances that are not serviced at all for many years.

There is also the point about unintended consequences. If a landlord can;t buy a new boiler at a merchant, its a mistake to assume that he will suddenly see the light and engage a qualified engineer. He is more likely to delve into the back end of EBAY and purchase some 2nd hand appliance away from any regulatory authority. Deny him the opportunity to buy a cooker hose, and he may just use garden hose. If you are going to do something in the name of safety, you have to be dead sure that the body count is not going to up through an unforeseen reaction.

Anyway, a better solution would be to require all new appliances to have a port to plug in a card reader, like your home banking card reader. Replace your GSR card with a chip and pin, and have the PCB on the appliance programmed to lock out on install, or whenever the case is removed, and only re-fire when a valid GSR card is plugged in. That moves the point of enforcement to where it belongs (installation/maintenance) and away from where it doesnt belong - point of purchase. It would take 20 years or more to work through the installed base, but in 20yrs, unlicenced installs would be a thing of the past.

 

[AlexGas]

From the petition:

Although engineers must be Gas Safe registered to work on boilers and other gas appliances, the policies, procedures and legal requirements around this are so vague...

Really!?