Is it a crime for a plumber to lie on a gas safety check certificate?

BadBehaviour

Basically they signed the annual boiler check certificate saying no tenant was present in the house while the check was being performed but it is a complete lie and easily disproved by the tenants. 
He lied about this because he was aware that he didn't actually carry out any checks at all and just tried to figure out what was wrong with the boiler (boiler is faulty and all they could say is they could see it doesn't heat up the water as it should and that's it. Couldn't even say what was causing the problem).
One of the tenants watched him the whole time and can say he made 2 calls whilst in front of the boiler (how would they know if they had not been present then?) and CCTV in the building would have recorded him being let in and all that also.
The tenants never gave permission to have anything carried out if no one could be present so there is lots of proof against his claim. 
Also, they have the mandatory now CO alarm installed by the letting agent right beside the boiler. Tenants have written proof this was installed long before any supposed checks. 
On the certificate the plumber states no such alarm is present or even working. Now, there's no way if he had checked for that that he could miss it. It's right there where the boiler is! 
If all this doesn't prove they didn't check  anything I don't know what does. 
This certificate clearly cannot be valid when it was issued fraudulently. 
What legal steps can be taken? The issue was raised with the agency and they completely glossed over it. 

anselld

The boiler does not need to be fully functioning to pass a gas safety test and I don’t remember any item on the LGSR recording the presence or otherwise of a tenant.
Have you made a written complaint about the malfunctioning of the boiler to the Landlord/Agent?

FlorayG

OP are you saying you think the 'plumber' (it needs to be a Gas Safe engineer, not a plumber) just looked at the outside of the boiler but didn't actually do anything? Because you say he was there and standing next to it. How could he not figure out why it wasn't working properly without inspecting the workings of it?
The bit about tenant not being preset is irrelevant even if not true. Gas safety checks don't require the tenant to be present

Bigphil1474

OP, do you know who the plumber was? (Some gas engineers are also plumbers). You can check their details on the gas safe register and should also be on the form they left. If you aren't happy with a gas safe engineer, you report them to the gas safe people - https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/gas-safety/concerns-reporting-illegal-gas-work/ 

Sapindus

FlorayG said:

The bit about tenant not being preset is irrelevant even if not true. Gas safety checks don't require the tenant to be present

I think it is relevant.  The "plumber" says he checked the boiler, no tenant was present and no CO alarm.  The tenant says they were present and there is a CO alarm so this casts some doubt on whether the plumber is also incorrect about having checked the boiler.

TBH it sounds like the plumber was in a different flat.  Not sure though how the plumber got in if there was no-one there.

Olinda99

by crime, do you mean will the police go and interview the plumber under caution ?

Mr.Generous

On gas safety checks with a combi engineers often just run the hot tap to fire the boiler up - they have to run it to do the flue test. It needs to fire up and stay on, not shut off after a minute or anything like that. If not they turn the heating on. Either way if the boiler wouldn't come on or stay on they dont try and sort it or work out the problem. They will have done a gas tight test at the meter so not just in front of the boiler. I'd guess that if the boiler couldn't pass the test he wouldn't look too hard for a co detector, and where it says Tenant Signature I get many back saying "Not Present" because the engineers get fed up of tenants not wanting to sign and being worried what they are signing.

Does the boiler work properly and safely should be the priority.

AskAsk

calm down OP.  it is a gas safety certificate.  it is just a certificate to confirm if the boiler is safe and as someone had said, it doesn't mean he has certified that the boiler is fully functional, it just needs to be safe and not kill anyone.

i have looked at the certificates that i have (and i have many to refer to!) and none of them have the item about whether the tenant was present so i am surprised yours have this box on it.

what is strange is that the certificate states no CO alarm but it still passes.  this is the actual item that makes this certificate incorrect but in reality, you do have a CO alarm that is working so it may just be a wrong entry on the certificate.

if the boiler is not working, you need to pay for an engineer to come out and fix it.  someone doing a gas safety check is not responsible for fixing it and may not even have the skills to fix the boiler!  you don't pay much for the gas safety checks so you can't expect the level of work that you are referring to.

just count yourself lucky that you have passed the test else you would need to sort the boiler out ASAP.

BadBehaviour

I know a tenant doesn't need to be present. The issue is they lied about it because the tenant saw no checks were done so they couldn't ask for the tenant to sign a certificate when they knew no checks had been done. That's just to prove the certificate was issued without any checks having been done.

A CO alarm being installed is a mandatory requirement now and same plumber carried out the check the previous year and put an alarm was present and working but this time he put no. The alarm is installed right next to the boiler and if he had actually did any checks he would have seen it. This is stuff that proves there was no check performed. The issue isn't if that stuff makes the boiler safe or not. The issue is there was a certificate produced without any checks at all. 

Even the agency confirmed the alarm is present and all that so how could their plumber say no to that? So, they're saying the agency failed to comply with the law! 

Any way you put it, there is clearly something not right here! 

Also, the issue with saying no tenant present means then he gained entry to the property himself but that's not true and the tenant has it in writing that they didn't allow him to come in with the keys before the appointment was booked so he broke into the property then since he says no tenant was there and if they were not there no one could have opened the door for him.

Anyway you spin this, he would have done something wrong. 

BadBehaviour

AskAsk said:

calm down OP.  it is a gas safety certificate.  it is just a certificate to confirm if the boiler is safe and as someone had said, it doesn't mean he has certified that the boiler is fully functional, it just needs to be safe and not kill anyone.

i have looked at the certificates that i have (and i have many to refer to!) and none of them have the item about whether the tenant was present so i am surprised yours have this box on it.

what is strange is that the certificate states no CO alarm but it still passes.  this is the actual item that makes this certificate incorrect but in reality, you do have a CO alarm that is working so it may just be a wrong entry on the certificate.

if the boiler is not working, you need to pay for an engineer to come out and fix it.  someone doing a gas safety check is not responsible for fixing it and may not even have the skills to fix the boiler!  you don't pay much for the gas safety checks so you can't expect the level of work that you are referring to.

just count yourself lucky that you have passed the test else you would need to sort the boiler out ASAP.

You didn't understand the issue. I'm not the one who has to repair anything here. I'm not the landlord.

The lies I mentioned aren't related to whether the boiler is safe to use or not. They simply prove this certificate was produced fraudulently since a tenant was present and wasn't asked to sign because the plumber knew he hadn't checked anything and so couldn't ask for their signature. Do you get what I'm saying? The CO alarm is present and he says no. That means he checked and according to him there wasn't one. But there is one right there beside the boiler so this is more proof nothing was actually checked! 

Also, by saying no alarm he saying then the agency failed to comply with the law about this stuff. The agency confirmed themselves they installed the alarm so their plumber lied and that is proved without a doubt.

How can this certificate have any legal value when it was issued pretending to have done the checks and they haven't been done? The tenant was there and saw he didn't check anything he says he has checked on that certificate.

theartfullodger

Given what you state I suggest you action....
https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/gas-safety/concerns-reporting-illegal-gas-work/

- if only to protect any future fraud victims.

Sounds very like fraud, various varieties... 
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/contents

- criminal offences