Millions of UK households are risking carbon monoxide poisoning, fires and gas explosions by employing illegal engineers, a survey suggests.
Almost one in five people (19%) who employed a gas appliance tradesperson did not check their ID card or qualifications, the poll for Gas Safe Register found.
A separate study of four years’ worth of data from Gas Safe Register investigations of more than 2,300 gas jobs found that 65% of those carried out by illegal fitters were unsafe, and one in five gas appliances were so dangerous that they had to be disconnected immediately.
The poll found households are most likely to employ a tradesperson based on word-of-mouth recommendations (53%), and trust them based on their personal presentation (41%) or how official they look (30%), rather than on their qualifications (11%).
Andrew Dent, whose family suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning as the result of a gas leak at his home in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, said an investigation revealed there had previously been an inadequate service on the boiler by an unregistered gas engineer.
Mr Dent said: “We woke up one morning feeling ill and suffering the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. When the Gas Safe-registered engineer told us of the leak he also explained that there had been an inadequate service on our boiler previously by an unregistered gas engineer.
“It was a very scary experience and had we not discovered it as soon as we did, it could have been a lot more serious.”
Gas Safe Register Jonathan Samuel said: “Our investigation team’s data shows how dangerous it is to let unregistered gas fitters carry out work in your home.
“We are therefore calling on people to ’trust the triangle’ by checking for the Gas Safe Register logo on gas fitters’ ID cards, and help keep their families safe by only employing registered engineers who are qualified to work on the appliance in question.”
:: Opinium surveyed 2,000 UK adults online between January 24 and 27.