What is gas safety?
Gas safety duties require gas appliances, pipework and flues to be maintained safely and work to be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer competent for that type of appliance.
Use this diagram
Free to use on your own site, in training material or in a handout, as long as the credit link stays on it. Paste this where you want the diagram to appear.
<figure>
<img src="https://facilityoptix.co.uk/glossary/gas-safety/diagram.svg" alt="gas safety — diagram from FacilityOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
<figcaption>
<a href="https://facilityoptix.co.uk/glossary/gas-safety">What is gas safety?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://facilityoptix.co.uk">FacilityOptix</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>Registration is not general. Engineers are registered for categories of work, and one registered for domestic boilers is not thereby competent for commercial catering equipment.
The register is public and checkable, which makes verifying an engineer a matter of looking rather than trusting a card.
Commercial catering, plant and heating systems have their own inspection regimes and their own paperwork, which is where a building with mixed gas uses most often has gaps.
In practice
A commercial kitchen with a service record and no interlock check.
The appliances are serviced. The ventilation interlock that is supposed to shut off gas if extraction fails has never been tested as a system.
Appliance servicing and system safety are different exercises, and catering gas safety depends on the interaction between them.
A kitchen can hold a full set of appliance certificates and be unsafe.
What goes wrong in practice
- Engineer registration assumed rather than checked against the register.
- Registration category not matched to the appliance type.
- Commercial equipment assumed covered by a domestic-style check.