Communities and Local Government CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Gas Safety Trust

The Trust supports the recommendations in the recent report from the All-Party Parliamentary Gas Safety Group, and stands ready to assist in any follow-up action.

The Gas Safety Trust is a registered charity, established in 2005 to improve gas safety further for the public and industry throughout the UK. The principal aim of the charity is to reduce the incidence of deaths and injury from carbon monoxide poisoning. The Trust is the successor body to the former CORGI Trust, and still licences a number of businesses to use that brand name. Much of its annual income comes from that source.

The Trust therefore supports any steps which lead to achieving its aim. It tries to do this through providing grant funding for project which help improve gas safety, supporting research to improve understanding of the causes of carbon monoxide poisoning, and lobbying the Government to influence carbon monoxide safety in the UK.

Two members of the Trust were on the Steering Group of the recent study by the All-Party Parliamentary Gas Safety Group (APPGSG) which led to the publication of the report Preventing Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. The Trust supports the recommendations in that report, and draws the Committee’s attention in particular to Chapter 4 of the Report dealing with better regulation. Section 4.2 deals specifically with Part J of the Building Regulations. We understand that the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will be consulting shortly on future changes to the Building Regulations, and this should therefore provide an opportunity to lobby for improvements to Part J so that carbon monoxide detectors and alarms are installed or where necessary replaced whenever notifiable work is carried out.

Following consideration of the APPGSG report and any recommendations which arise from this Select Committee Inquiry, the Trust stands ready to assist in the ways set out in the second paragraph.

January 2012