Surely the safety of combustable appliances is something any landlord would get covered by instucting a gas safe registred plumber - who would almost certainly charge more than £35+VAT.

Not sure if CO alarms are in the scope of a gas safety check - but if you asked a plumber they would probably do it anyway.

It's not the title "engineer" that's a problem. The title "doctor" isn't a protected title but it's an offence to incorrectly suggest you're registered with the GMC. It would be potentially fraud by misrepresentation for someone to wrongly suggest they're a chartered engineer for financial gain.

The question is about competence. The problem being highlighted here isn't the misuse of the term engineer, it's the providing of advice at a bargin basement price which is given by someone who may not competent to provide the advice - they might well be competent but the title "engineer" doesn't help whereas a term like "gas safe registered engineer" is more useful.

Surely the safety of combustable appliances is something any landlord would get covered by instucting a gas safe registred plumber - who would almost certainly charge more than £35+VAT.

Not sure if CO alarms are in the scope of a gas safety check - but if you asked a plumber they would probably do it anyway.

It's not the title "engineer" that's a problem. The title "doctor" isn't a protected title but it's an offence to incorrectly suggest you're registered with the GMC. It would be potentially fraud by misrepresentation for someone to wrongly suggest they're a chartered engineer for financial gain.

The question is about competence. The problem being highlighted here isn't the misuse of the term engineer, it's the providing of advice at a bargin basement price which is given by someone who may not competent to provide the advice - they might well be competent but the title "engineer" doesn't help whereas a term like "gas safe registered engineer" is more useful.

Surely the safety of combustable appliances is something any landlord would get covered by instucting a gas safe registred plumber

Not necessarily. Safety depends on all sorts of things - e.g. not blocking air vents of flues or covering with fabrics is the sort of thing that ordinary persons are expected to attend to. Likewise it's not rocket science to check whether there's a CO detector present and superficially at least in a working condition.

Not sure if CO alarms are in the scope of a gas safety check

I think it usually is - but even so I see no harm in pre-empting the check. If I had a car with a flat tyre or a cracked windscreen, I'd get it fixed before taking it for an MOT.

   - Andy.

AJJewsbury said:

If I had a car with a flat tyre or a cracked windscreen, I'd get it fixed before taking it for an MOT.

What if you had a laceration in the sidewall of a tyre? You might not know about that if it was on the inner wall.

Keir Stitt said:

It would be potentially fraud by misrepresentation for someone to wrongly suggest they're a chartered engineer for financial gain.

In theory, but it is a notoriously difficult offence to establish. Various scams are probably the best example and I very much doubt that Plod would go after a fake engineer.

A civil remedy may be a better option, but then again, if the miscreant has no funds and is uninsured, where will the money come from?

"Electrician" is a similar occupation, which has little meaning until you come to he question of registration. And if your purportedly registered electrician makes a right bodge of e.g. a CU replacement, what are you going to do about it?

What if you had a laceration in the sidewall of a tyre? You might not know about that if it was on the inner wall.

That's a risk of course. But I don't see that fixing obvious faults in advance of the normal professional routine checks does anything to increase the risk - quite the reverse if fact. I'm not advocating omitting or reducing the routine professional checks, just saying that less skilled checks in addition could be both economically advantageous (problems are identified and fixed at a lower cost) and possibly increase safety somewhat (as they're fixed sooner). Yes, there will sill be residual risks, but unless you go down the road of doing a full MOT before every journey, that's something we just have to live with.

  - Andy.

Indeed - actually once you are a regular and the garage knows you do your own repairs there is a relationship - "we spotted this, its not an  MOT issue but you may like to know about it, - I see you have already done the brakes " etc. There is a bit of a slope towards ' I know it's you, I'm not looking too hard' which has potential to be unhealthy, but by and large it all works, and most accidents are not caused by mechanical failures at all, and even fewer by those that should have been spotted weeks before. 

Indeed much older cars likely to be in the hands of enthusiasts are totally MOT exempt by law - you are simply on trust to keep it in shape yourself.( and as always, liable if someone gets hurt)

It would be an interesting world if we did that with older gas appliances and electrical installations.

Mike.