With effect from 01 April 2012 any engineer who does not hold CPA1 will have their CEN1 and HTR1 assessments suspended by Gas Safe Register. Additionally anyone working on an appliance that requires the use of an ECGA must have the assessment now.

Please don't let your qualifications be suspended. There are a significant number of engineers nationally yet to complete CPA1, and as the 01 Apr 12 deadline approaches we expect to be inundated with requests for courses. There are only a certain number of courses that we can run, and places (as with all courses) are limited. There is no grace period after 01 Apr 12, your CEN1 & HTR1 will be suspended, any work on this type of appliance will then be "out of scope" and action will be taken against you by Gas Safe Register if you continue to work.

Book now to ensure that you can continue working on these appliances past the Apr 2012 deadline. Please remember when booking that the "competency certificate" issued by the certification body can take around 3 weeks to process. So in reality to ensure that you are compliant you need to have taken your CPA1 assessment by the end of Feb 2012. Simply passing the assessment is not proof of competency, only the certification body (in our case Construction Skills) can issue the certificate of competence required by Gas Safe Register.

You will have also seen in the latest (Oct 11) copy of the "Registered Gas Engineer" that the CPA1 assessment will form part of the Core assessment from Apr 2012. However anyone with a CPA1 that expires before their core will need to either

a) Take the new core assessment early (remembering that it can be taken up to 6 months early with no loss of time) or;

b) Take the CPA1 assessment again, then take their core when it is due

If the CPA1 assessment is allowed to expire (if not already having completed the new core) any HTR1/CEN1/CENWAT (and potentially other category) assessments will be suspended until the CPA1 assessment is completed.

Information on both of these changes can be found in the Oct 11 issue of the Registered Gas Engineer magazine, Page 8 for the CPA1 deadline & pages 10-11 for CCN1 changes.

With effect from 01 April 2011 CEN1 and WAT1 will be combined into one assessment (CENWAT). Existing holders of both CEN1 and WAT1 will be able to undertake a CENWAT re-assessment. Those engineers who only hold either CEN1 or WAT1 will be required to undertake an initial CENWAT assessment. Along with this is the requirement that any engineer that holds WAT1 must have CPA1 by April 2012 (as is the case with CEN1 or HTR1). Please see our February 2011 newsletter for more information, or the Ferbruary 2011 issue of the Registered Installer magazine.

We regret to inform our customers that grants are no longer available for any of our gas or electric courses. A grant for up to 50% of the course fee may be available for Energy Efficiency, Unvented and the other renewable courses that we can offer. Please contact us for details.

CPA1 will be a pre-requisite to undertaking a CEN1 or HTR1 assessment. Existing holders of CEN1 and/or HTR1 will need to undertake the CPA1 assessment to keep their competencies in these categories. See Oct 09 newsletter for more information.

We have re-vamped the Essential Electrics course and now offer this as part of our standard courses. For more information please follow this link

In collaboration with Worcester we are now able to offer OFTEC assessments for 101, 105E and 600A. For more information please follow this link

Michael & Neill Ovenden, and Claire Munnings of Harlequin Services (UK) Limited have acquired Domestic Gas Services upon the retirement of Mr Paul Gooda.