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Letters
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Installers didn’t engage with the Green Homes Grant – and why would they?
The questions that people will be asking are why did the Green Homes Grant, a £2 billion government-funded scheme, not work? Was it too much red tape and government heads in the sand? Why did it take the Prime Minister so long to step in and stop all the absurd red tape?
I had been asking these questions for some time and eventually the plug was pulled at the end of March.
The nub of the issue is that installers did not engage with this scheme, and why would they? Many of us were burnt by the Green Deal and have the scars, with many now not in business.
During the Bonfield Review of the Green Deal, we established that there were no complaints on heating installations, which made MCS and Trustmark redundant for the heating industry. I also asked which consumer protection legislation was not actually working and did consumers need any more protection? This has never been answered. We were not invited to any more of the meetings.
Then Green Deal Mark II was launched [in September 2020] as the Green Homes Grant voucher scheme.
I asked BEIS at a recent virtual Energy Efficiency Association meeting how many installers had uncoupled from the scheme. BEIS did not know and, more worryingly, did not appear to care. It was noted that most installers were still waiting for payment and many said they had severe financial difficulties due to this.
It was also noted that many operatives were being laid off, so the scheme was failing to create jobs, apart from the army of inspectors and form fillers.
I asked: “When will the Prime Minister step in and stop all this absurd red tape? This bureaucracy is killing the country.” They were unable to answer. There were numerous questions being tabled in Parliament and it was interesting to see how deep their heads went into the sand before reality kicked in.
We need a solution for the professional heating engineer to lead the way towards zero carbon without the red tape. Are MCS, Trustmark and PAS 2035 really necessary for the professional heating engineer? Climate change will be resolved with engineering solutions by engineers, not by an army of inspectors and accreditation bodies. Peter Thom, Green Heat
What’s up with chimneys?
Why on earth are boiler flues all of a sudden referred to as “chimneys” in your latest issue of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It reads as if it’s written by someone who can’t differentiate between chimneys, flues and vents. Frank Chandler
From Gas Safe Register’s Technical Team: “For many years, the standard writers (BSI) have opted to follow the European term chimney to describe what has historically been referred to by practicing gas engineers as a flue. In order to recognise this, we have, for some time used the term ‘chimney/flue’ and now we use ‘chimney’ in the captions accompanying the photographs in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly pages.
The Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations 1998 as amended refers to flue/chimney throughout Appendix 3 Requirements for appliances and flues. In addition, the current British Standard 5440-1: Specification for installation of gas appliances to chimneys and for maintenance of chimneys, which has been in place since 2008, states within its foreword the following: “ …European work on chimney standards has brought about the need to redefine chimney concepts and adopt common terminology consistent with the range of products used across the whole European Community …to align with European Standard (the general requirements for which are given in BS EN 1443), where a chimney is treated as a structure containing a flue (the passageway) and might include a liner (inner wall), insulation and an outer wall. The common terminology in UK industry, which has regarded a chimney as a masonry structure generally associated with solid fuel appliances, has been superseded.”
It subsequently defines a chimney as: “3.9 chimney – structure consisting of a wall or walls enclosing a flue or flues. Note: This includes chimneys of all materials (eg, metal, masonry, plastic, etc). It may be either an open-flue chimney for use with an open-flued appliance or a room-sealed chimney configuration for use with a room-sealed appliance.”
We do accept that it is taking our industry some considerable time to fully accept what will probably remain interchangeable terminology.
The All about You survey results (Registered Gas Engineer, March 2021) made for interesting reading, but nothing really surprising to me, and probably quite a few others.
As a 59-year-old who was part of ACOPs and Corgi and now Gas Safe, I have got the T-shirt – which I was hoping to hang up, but the demographic of members and who does what confirms my fears.
I think I am one of the last plumbers to go through a proper four-year apprenticeship and then one year of City & Guilds.
Now you can become Gas Safe qualified in less than a year, which is why the figures for age are tilted to over-45s – with 5 per cent over 65 who, like me, probably think they can’t retire and let the youngsters get their hands on their boilers.
Perhaps it’s good that hydrogen is being rolled out. I’m still working, but not that hard. Martin Garside
