So why is this?

Well it stems back to 1991 when the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) made it mandatory in law for any professional person working on a gas appliance to be registered with a gas safety scheme to assess that the person was competent to do so.

The body awarded with the task of doing this was CORGI, which had been promoting gas safety since 1970 as it was formed in the wake of the Ronan Point disaster in 1968 which killed five people in a gas explosion.

When this legislation was introduced it was accompanied by a certification scheme that involved what was then known as ACOPS, a relatively straight forward assessment of an individual’s ability to work on gas products. It was also relatively cheap to complete, so there was not too much complaint about it... except from the appliance repairers which of course fell on deaf ears.

Safety

As we are often reminded, we’re not important and our opinion is rarely heard as we don’t kill enough people. Now, in a great many ways that is a compliment and testament to the fact that we don’t have many so-called “cowboys” left in this industry, but annoying as we want to keep it that way and yet still make it a viable business to be in.

It really is this simple; if the fault lies beyond the shut off point for the cooker, oven, hob or dryer we will not investigate any further. We are appliance repairers, not heating engineers or plumbers we simply will not touch any other gas appliance other than the one mentioned and, if we find a problem beyond our little bit, we walk away. This may strike some as being a bit off in some ways but it is not at all, it is the safest possible action that we can take.

The simple fact of it is we don’t know much about gas heaters, boilers, fires or whatever but we do know a lot about cooking appliances, a lot more than most plumbers or gas fitters will ever know about them.

Costs

With the downtime when the engineer is on a course it has been calculated that the cost to train an employee is between £3000 and £4000 to repair gas cooking only. This increases if you also want the operative to be able to repair gas tumble dryers.

On average most repairers that carry out repairs to gas cookers will break into a gas supply for an appliance once or twice a week. This makes the cost of gaining the certification totally non viable for most repairers as there is no way to recoup the training costs on that sort of work level.

The simple fact of the matter is that the repairs business is not a high profit one; many sole traders often struggle to earn £200 per week in profit and/or salary. A training course that will cost as much as this is simply not financially viable for them.

Getting Certified

To be accepted for an ACS course you have to show a body of work that proves that you have been working on gas products for some time to prove that you are “competent” to sit the course. Well, just how does an appliance repairer do that?

We don’t have plumbing experience as the ACS and colleges recognise them, we don’t work on the appliances as we’re not allowed to if we are not certified and we can’t get the experience as we don’t see enough of the products to qualify anyway. It is a classic Catch 22 situation.

What Can Be Done?

Already UK Whitegoods has taken many of these concerns to the HSE during the review of gas safety in 2006. What we need is a specific domestic appliance certification at a far lower cost as well as the framework changed to clearly define the role of the appliance repairers.

In the end, the consumer is best served both commercially and from a safety perspective, by having a proper appliance repairer who will have a vast knowledge of cooking and drying products as opposed to someone who rarely, if ever, sees these machines.