Buckinghamshire Housing Association installs life-saving technology

16 January, 2018

Phil Green, CEO of Bucks HA, with local resident

A Buckinghamshire-based housing association is using life-saving gas safety technology in its 500 homes across Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and South Oxfordshire.

The Buckinghamshire Housing Association (Bucks HA) is installing innovative gas safety technology from British software company – Gas Tag – that will help to keep their tenants safe.

Annual gas safety checks are a legal requirement for all landlords. However, keeping track of the paper trail for annual gas certificates, replacement boilers and new appliances for many homes presents a serious challenge for landlords.

By installing this revolutionary technology, these life-saving checks will be captured using an app on a smartphone – allowing the work to be monitored in real time – which will help keep tenants safe by assuring the quality of the work being undertaken is in line with gas safety regulations.

The concept is simple; a physical Gas Tag is placed in each property and tracks that all gas appliances and gas work is carried out by Gas Safe Registered engineers.

Each engineer is able to evidence their competency and their completed job gets uploaded to a centralised portal where the data can be monitored. Illegal gas fitters are unable to access the Gas Tag app and are not able to carry out any work through the portal.

“Smaller housing providers like Bucks HA tend to be more reliant upon manual-based monitoring systems. Having reviewed our health and safety processes, we are confident that Gas Tag will effectively remove the risk of manual error”, says Phil Green, chief executive for Bucks HA.

“Thanks to this new technology, we know that all gas work is carried out by Gas Safe Registered engineers giving our residents even greater reassurance that the work has been carried out to the highest standard.”

Once the roll-out of the initiative has been completed later this year, all of Bucks HA’s 500 homes will be fitted with technology that has been heralded as “the most significant quantum leap in domestic gas safety compliance in 20 years” by Barry Sheerman MP – the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Carbon Monoxide.

Stephen Ullathorne, co-founder and chief executive for Gas Tag said: “We are excited to be working with Bucks HA as part of their commitment to putting tenant safety at the heart of what they do. Our technology is an industry first and gives Bucks HA and their residents peace of mind when it comes to gas safety.”