F-Gas Regulations

Many users from respectable businesses, facility or office managers, caterers, hotelkeepers, retailers to building maintenance companies are unaware of their legal obligations under the F-Gas Regulations. The regulations make companies or individuals accountable for the leaks or potential leaks from their systems, not the installation company or subsequent servicing company. As an operator (defined as the person who benefits from its use) of air conditioning or refrigeration equipment, they are legally obliged to do the following:

• Prevent leakage
• Arrange for proper refrigerant recovery – by qualified authorised personnel
• Carry out leak tests
• Ensure only competent personnel carry out leak tests
• Maintain records of refrigerants

Sounds a lot doesn’t it? . . . . the good news is that help is at hand by employing the services of Consort Environmental Services Limited. The Newbury-based company invested heavily in training for all of its engineers in the last six months to bring their qualifications up to the new standard. This resulted in the successful awarding of a Full Company Certificate by REFCOM in March 2010, well in advance of the deadline of July 2011.

Dan Lovell, Director, explained “The REFCOM F-Gas Certification Scheme allows the end user to have peace of mind that their refrigeration and air conditioning is being looked after by qualified competent engineers. It’s similar to the Gas Safe Scheme that replaced the Corgi Register in the commercial and domestic gas industry last year – it’s designed to raise standards and remove those companies that do not employ engineers that are qualified to handle refrigerants safely.”

REFCOM have registered over 3800 companies to date but only 288 have gained full certification¹ of which Consort is now one, the remaining companies being awarded an Interim Certificate that will expire in July 2011 unless full certification is gained.

Consort’s decision to get ahead of the competition and invest in the training programme was taken for a number of reasons, not only to beat the predicted last minute rush for training in 2011 from many of the 40,000 engineers in the industry but also to provide peace of mind for its high profile customers that Consort can meet all of their requirements under the new regulations.

“The training typically meant an engineer was out of service for 3 days whilst undertaking the many theoretical and practical assessments of the CITB J11 Safe Handling of Refrigerants course selected by the company. As this is a new qualification to the industry, all engineers have to be re-qualified so we decided to train our entire field of engineers over a 6 month period so as to avoid any drop in service to our clients. We can now offer a full advisory service on F-Gas to our clients, to discuss their obligations and work together with them in devising a planned maintenance programme that not only ensures the optimum performance of their equipment but ensures their responsibilities under the regulations are covered.” Mr. Lovell explained.

The frequency of planned maintenance and leak test visits varies on the size of the refrigerant charge within each system. Consort can offer a free review of companies’ refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, covering their refrigerant usage, F Gas obligations and planned maintenance recommendations therefore ensuring that they have peace of mind that they meet the F Gas regulations