Gas safety testing has become overly complicated and puts too much of a burden on employers, according to Bob Towse, head of technical and safety at the HVCA, who welcomes the imminent review of the ACS testing regime.
When responsibility for gas safety registration switched to the Gas Safe Register this year most of the gas industry welcomed the new regime's stated back-to-basics approach.

Formerly, there had been an unwelcome proliferation of ancillary activities which were not linked to the core task of ensuring the safety of the public. Too much of this activity was about making money at the expense of registered contractors.

The Accredited Certification Scheme (ACS) was a good case in point. This system of testing was established with the best of intentions to create a framework of competence to ensure contractors were trained to carry out safe gas work. Tragically, it was allowed to mushroom into an unwieldy bureaucratic nightmare with no fewer than 80 separate tests.

Not only did this cause untold and potentially dangerous confusion, it also created a financial burden for employers, who found themselves continually paying for operatives to sit multiple tests. A number of HVCA member firms have reported to us they have employees with as many as 35 separate ACS accreditations. You have to admire their diligence, but you can't help thinking this is excessive.

The problem stems from the fact that individual appliances became the subject of ACS modules and as manufacturers launched more products more modules were developed. Gas cookers clearly need to be covered by ACS but was it necessary to develop a separate test for Agas and then produce another one when a new type of Aga was developed? There is even a separate test for polyethylene pipe.

Within gas safety engineering there are a number of core competences and the ACS regime should be testing those. Those core skills can be applied to a wide range of appliances where the safety principle and basic engineering approach is the same. Hopefully, common sense will prevail during the planned review this winter and we will end up with four or five substantial packages leading to overall gas safety competence. The whole system needs to be drastically slimmed down and made more user-friendly. Far from diminishing the scheme, this will actually enhance it and make it more fit-for-purpose.

Core competence should cover broad headings such as: gas safety legislation; emergency actions; ventilation standards; operation of appliances and their controls; flue testing; burner pressures and so on. These can all be built into larger modules that will reduce the bureaucracy and the time needed to ensure operatives are trained, while also reducing the excessive cost burden on their employers.

The separation of the ACS administration from the gas safety register is a sensible first step. ACS is about competence and the gas safety regime should have an input into how it operates, but responsibility should lie with the sector skills councils and trainers. Professional trade bodies represent the employers, who will end up using and paying for the testing scheme, so we also have a key advisory role to play.

Gas safety competence is clearly one of the highest priorities for any installation firm, but it has become a disproportionately expensive area of contractors' work. Continually ladling extra burdens on to registered firms was a major failing of the old gas safety regime, and it is heartening to see that Gas Safe Register seems intent on reversing that approach.

Hopefully, the revised ACS system will become another example of this new, more user-friendly and therefore, effective philosophy.