APHCL fight Gas Work Notification

APHCL's legal challenge over the legality of CORGI's mandatory Gas Work Notification (GWN) scheme ended today with the judge ruling against APHCL's application for Judicial Review. In an Oral Hearing held at the High Court on Monday 7th November 2005, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith ruled that CORGI has the right to implement the mandatory GWN scheme as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Government have empowered CORGI to establish legislation on gas safety as part of their remit to govern gas safety. Mr Justice Calvert-Smith was critical of CORGI on its lack of consultation with the industry on the development and introduction of GWN, but was reluctant to progress the argument to judicial review due to his ruling on CORGI's authority to introduce GWN as the ultimate outcome of a fresh consultation would ultimately have the same conclusion.

Victoria Russell of Fenwick Elliott, Solicitors representing APHCL commented, 'APHCL fought valiantly on behalf of its members and believes the arguments presented on how GWN was imposed and that the administration of the scheme is over burdensome and bureaucratic, were justified as the judge ruled that costs should not be awarded to CORGI, meaning each party pay their own legal costs.

Commenting on the decision, Clive Dickin, Chief Executive Officer of APHCL said, 'APHCL has always been, and continues to be, a leading supporter of gas safety, but at present GWN is having very little impact on improving gas safety.

Statistics show that 450,000 Gas Work Notifications have been issued since the introduction of the scheme on 1st April this year.

During that time, APHCL would have expected some 800,000 gas appliances to have been installed.

That leaves a quarter of a million gas boilers, fires and cookers that have escaped CORGI's net.

That doesn't strike us as a particularly good record'.

Mr Dickin continued to say, 'These figures support APHCL's opinion that GWN is over burdensome and bureaucratic, but in light of today's outcome, we will look to work closely with CORGI to ensure that GWN can become a user-friendly process for the plumbing and heating industry'.

CORGI's own statistics show that of the 450,000 notified jobs since the introduction of GWN, 226 were visited by CORGI inspectors.

They found a 25% defect rate which, if representative, would indicate a total of over 110,000 defective installations.

However, during this same period, there has been no significant increase in gas-related mortalities or injuries.