If you’re a mobile caterer you’ll already appreciate the importance of LPG safety, but you might have noticed that it can be tricky to find a gas engineer that you trust. Some gas engineers have been known to bend the rules (so we’ll clear those rules up for you quickly now).

What the law says (The Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations 1998)

1. You must have all gas installation work done by a Gas Safe registered engineer, whether the work is domestic or commercial
2. Mobile caterers must only use Gas Safe engineers who have mobile catering qualifications to work on their appliances (i.e. they can’t only be qualified to work on domestic appliances)
3. Gas engineers must be qualified in the field and product that they are working on. For example, to sign off an LPG griddle the engineer needs to be qualified in “Mobile Catering Range Cookers LPG”. Whereas, if the appliance is a range cooker inside a kitchen that runs of natural gas then the qualification would need to be “Commercial Catering Range Cookers NG”
4. You must have your appliances serviced at least annually and retain a gas certificate as proof. Some engineers will only issue certificates for six months if they consider your equipment to be at high risk of becoming unsafe through use. Gazebo traders’ equipment tends to be particularly high risk due to the nature of being connected and disconnected regularly

What qualifications could an engineer have?

How do you know if the engineer is qualified?

It’s really easy to check online, on the Gas Safe register, searching by name or area.

When you have selected an individual engineer, look for ‘catering’ under ‘non-domestic area of work’ and then search within that section to see if the engineer has the appropriate mobile catering ‘tickets’ (qualifications) to work on your appliances. Remember that has to include for each type of appliance.

Have you had work done by an unqualified engineer?

If your gas installations have been serviced by an engineer who doesn’t have the appropriate qualifications, sadly your gas certificate will be invalid, and that could lead to legal trouble if you ever had an accident involving gas.

Take a look at the Gas Safe register, using the advanced tools, to make sure that the engineer you used was ok and your certificate is valid. If you do need to have your equipment re-serviced (or are looking to get them looked at anyway), remember to head to www.ncass.org.uk first.