Boiler fitter wasn’t Gas Safe registered

[Curlywurly1975]

After months of chasing for a certificate for our new boiler, it’s looking increasingly likely that our fitter wasn’t GS registered.

Before anyone shouts at me for not checking - he was hired by our builder. He’d done work for our builder before with no issue with certificates so he had no reason to think there would be issues this time.

Builder is furious and thinks the likely scenario is that he probably didn’t pay the fee to renew his GS registration. He plans to report him.

Builder sent a different fitter to check the boiler over - it’s all safe and correctly installed but he understandably is not willing to certify someone else’s work.

So where does this leave us? I can’t get it certified can I? So when I eventually come to sell, I’ll have to pay an indemnity insurance - but how much will that be??

I know some will say the liability lies with the builder but that seems a little unfair when he employed the fitter in good faith.

So cheesed off with this. ☹️

That's not good at all. If you can ensure the plumber definitely wasn't registered and can prove it, Then I think the builder should pay for a gas safe plumber to carry out the work. Or simply do the official checks.
The boiler is essentially deemed unusable without it.
He agreed to have someone install a boiler for you, in exchange for a fee, chose the supplier, and it's illegal to do so without a gas safe cert.

It’s crap isn’t it? The problem is it’s very difficult to find a fitter who will agree to certify someone else’s work, which is understandable.

And although I know technically the liability lies with my builder, I feel bad for him. He’d used the fitter on other jobs and never had a problem with him certifying work so he reasonably assumed he was still certified and fit to carry out our work.

I should clarify we’re only assuming he wasn’t GS - because he keeps saying he’s sorted our certificate (but I’ve never received it) and I called GS and they have no record of it. However neither we or my builder have managed to get his GS number to check. I’m hoping that there’s some miraculous misunderstanding and he has somehow certified it…

We had a very similar problem. The guy had done previous work then replaced the boiler for us. He claimed he was GS certified. We chased and chased for the number and he he kept fobbing us off. Eventually we checked with GS and there was no record.

Thd guy actually had the cheek to get angry with us. Said he’d given us a good deal and he used to teach the GS course. Eventually he arranged to have someone who he had previously worked with come and certify it.

I think they just don’t like to pay the fee.

@DangerMouseAndPenfoldx good to hear yours got sorted.
I’m just baffled that your fitter and mine would take the risk - if they get reported they could lose their livelihood and get into serious trouble. Did they think we wouldn’t notice that we hadn’t got a certificate at the end of the installation??

I know you feel sorry for your builder, but this is his mess to sort out!

It is your builder's responsibility to sort. However, its not a complicated issue to have a Gas Safe Engineer do a full check of the pipework and boiler and then issue a certificate, it might be a day's labour cost to have him do that but worth it. Signing off someone else's work is fine so long as it has been fully checked.
Your builder should pay that.

We had this recently. Boiler installed 10 years ago never registered. The lady I purchased off arranged for an engineer to go round and check installation was compliant & issued a gas safe certificate - not too much hassle.

Ridiculous fuss for a worthless piece of paper.

We had a similar thing. Our builder arranged the install and when we came to selling we realised that it had never been certified. We paid for an independent fitter to come round and inspect it. Luckily he was satisfied with how it was fitted and certified it as it was expensive enough for him to come out, let alone if he'd had to fix any existing mistakes.

So many dodgy installers out there. Had the same thing though he never admitted it. Eventually after a lot of phone calls and threats to report to gas safe etc I got a signed registration in the post. I suspect he had a mate sign it for him as I couldn’t find him or his company on the register - lesson for next time as he had a gas safe business card with registration number on it. Had another company out and they said all was installed as it should be, and as I then had the paperwork through I haven’t pursued further. This was three years ago now and all has been well. Hope yours does too in the end but if you have had a dodgy install then any visiting engineer is duty bound to decommission the device and shut the gas off if they see anything dodgy, so be prepared for that in the middle of winter!!

And then when a house blows up, as has in fact happened more than once?

Can you not get a certified engineer check and issue a certificate? Like in a rental property?

Ive known boilers over 15 years been checked and they were fine .

More usually an old gas pipe leaking before the meter or the boiler and worst case into a basement, then a spark and bang.

Can you get a gas safety report like landlords have to?
They are not terrible expensive - £100ish - but builder should pay of course.