Your first months on the Gas Safe Register: what to expect

The registration email lands, you can legally work on gas, and then Gas Safe Register books a visit to watch you do it. That is not a sign anything is wrong: the probationary inspection is a standard rule of registration for every new business. Almost nothing practical is written about these first months, so here is the walkthrough: the inspection itself, what must be in the van and the records, and the duties that switch on with registration.

What is the probationary inspection?

A work inspection with your local Gas Safe inspector, required of every newly registered business and carried out within three months of you joining the register. The invitation comes by email, and Gas Safe's own guidance says to check your junk mail, which tells you how often that happens. The inspector will usually make contact in the week before the visit, by text or call, to confirm arrangements. It applies even if you were registered before: a new registration carries no previous assessment of your competence and risk across.

What happens on the day?

Come prepared with two addresses within about 30 minutes of your business address where you have done gas work, or plan to carry out a job during the inspection itself, such as a service or a landlord's gas safety check. Expect the whole visit to take up to about 2.5-3 hours, quicker if you answer and work confidently, with ID cards shown on both sides. The practical side draws on exactly the checks you do daily: tightness testing the installation, working pressure at the meter, gas rates, flue gas analysis where needed, safety devices, and spotting and reporting anything unsafe.

What equipment will the inspector expect to see?

• The current IGEM G-11 Gas Industry Unsafe Situations Procedure, as a downloaded or electronic copy, plus your other reference material.
• Your flue gas analyser, fully charged, with its calibration certificate available.
• Leak detection fluid, smoke matches and smoke pellets, and a stopwatch and tape measure for gas rating.
• Caps, meter discs and plugs for the pipe sizes you work on, with jointing compounds and PTFE tape.
• Two temporary continuity bonds.
• Warning advice notices, Warning Do Not Use labels, compartment warning labels and cross-bonding notices.
• The official list is longer and depends on your work, but none of it should be a special purchase for inspection day.

What work records must you keep from day one?

This is the part of the inspection new engineers underestimate. Gas Safe registered businesses are required to keep adequate records of the gas work they carry out, retained for at least six years, and the probationary inspection is the first time yours will be looked at. As a minimum each record covers: who did the work and the business's registration number, the address and the date, a description of the work including each appliance's make, model and location, positive recording of the essential safety checks and results, tightness test results, operating pressure or heat input, flue checks, ventilation, combustion analysis readings, and any action taken on unsafe situations, such as warning labels issued. Note this is your duty as a registered business, and it is longer than the landlord's own two-year duty to keep gas safety records: two different obligations, two different clocks.

What if it goes wrong, or you have no work yet?

At the end of the visit the inspector gives you the outcome: competent, or not yet competent. Not yet competent means you are signposted to further training and another inspection is booked. The serious cases are the ones where dangerous gas work was left and competence could not be demonstrated, which can bring sanctions up to suspension until a satisfactory inspection has taken place. If you have not done any gas work since registering, the knowledge and equipment checks still go ahead, with the practical element following once you have work to show. And guard the appointment itself: it cannot be rebooked except in exceptional circumstances, cancelling with less than 24 hours' notice is treated as an aborted visit, and not turning up at all can bring sanctions of its own.

What notification duties come with registration?

• Building Regulations: in England and Wales, installing a heat-producing gas appliance such as a boiler is notifiable work. As a registered business you self-certify by notifying through Gas Safe Register within 30 days of completion, and the property owner receives a Building Regulations Compliance Certificate.
• RIDDOR: registered engineers must report gas appliances or fittings they consider dangerous to the HSE under RIDDOR. Your unsafe-situations paperwork is what feeds this, another reason the G-11 procedure rides in the van.
• Keeping the register current: your business details, engineers and competencies need to stay up to date with Gas Safe, and registration renews annually. Fees are covered in our costs post; the habit is diarising the renewal the day you register.

How do you build the record habit from day one?

The inspection tests your knowledge, your kit, and whether your paperwork shows the checks you claim to have done. It is, in effect, an audit of your first weeks' records, and the engineers who find it easy are the ones whose records were made at the appliance, not reconstructed at the kitchen table the night before. That habit is easiest to build when the record is the same motion as the job. Manifold does the CP12 or service record on your phone at the appliance, with make, model, location, readings and tightness results captured as you go, keeps every job in a searchable archive that quietly outlasts the six-year requirement, and raises the invoice from the same record before you leave. Start that way in month one and inspection visits, landlord call-backs and warranty queries stop being events.