To ask for an opinion from anyone who works in the plumbing industry.

[Topseyt]

My tenant recently alerted me to a problem with the gas central heating in one of my properties. The boiler would not come on at all no matter what. The original message was last Tuesday evening.

I made a few phone calls and by Wednesday afternoon had found a Gas Safe registered plumber (I did check, and he is on the Gas Safe register) who could go in at 3pm that afternoon. Great.

He visited and informed me that the pump had failed, saying he would replace it the next day, which he did. Pumps do fail now and again, I know. OK. Except it wasn't. Boiler still wouldn't fire up, so he decided it must be the fan inside the boiler (it is a condensing boiler). Part ordered. It came. He went back again and fitted it. Boiler then worked briefly before failing again.

By now it is Friday, and the tenant has been without heating since early in the week.

The tenant also says that whilst all this is going on he wrote out the Gas Safety Certificate, for a boiler which would only fire up for a few minutes!!

Of course, by Friday evening it was no longer working (again). His two stock responses seem to have been "It should work" and "it'll be something and nothing"!

After strongly worded telephone calls from both the tenant and I on Friday night and Saturday morning he told the tenant that he would be back at 3pm on Saturday afternoon and would finally get it sorted. He didn't turn up.

I have since spoken to him, and he is trying to claim that he said 3pm on Monday (wasn't very convincing). Tenant insists he is lying.

My question is this. Is it possible for an inadequate workman to pass the Gas Safe tests and become registered? How would I know or how could I check if there had ever been a problem? Gas Safe registration is the legal requirement for plumbers who want to work with gas appliances and I had checked this out. Does anyone have any experience here? I wondered if I could find out on the Trading Standards website whether or not there had ever been any problems, but so far nothing.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. Just about at the end of my rope and considering chucking him off the job if it isn't fully functioning after tomorrow's visit (assuming he turns up, or course).

[Topseyt]

Oh, and just so that I am not seen as totally unreasonable, I do appreciate that very occasionally it might take more than one visit to get to the root of a problem.

Lying about when he promised to come out the third time and just giving the grumpy response of "it should work" is not inspiring confidence.