Chris Flaherty from Vietec Heating takes a look at PAS2035, and give his opinions about how it could affect life for installers:

Some of you might of seen the recent articles regarding PAS2035, which has been brought in for Government ECO grant system projects, but what is it?

Well in my personal opinion it’s just unnecessary bureaucracy, all it does is create more people who want money from a simple boiler change for doing very-little-to-nothing. I see no benefits to either the installer or the homeowner in this PAS2035, in fact the installer probably comes off worse. The cream is being taken as it passes through the chain and very little is left for the essential part of the job, which is the actual installation of the boiler.

Now I’m not involved in this ECO work, but in my opinion, and that of many other installers, to do a good job on a boiler change, it often takes more than one day, if all works are carried out properly.

Will ECO and PAS 2025 leave enough money in place for the installer to do a good job?

So I suppose you’re wondering, well, if you don’t do ECO work, why should PAS2035 concern you? Well my problem is, I see this creeping into all boiler changes at some point, and this would be a disaster for our industry.

Where has PAS2035 come from? It’s from a bunch of certification bodies, so not industry, and why would they do this? Well in my opinion, it’s money, nothing more. I see no benefit to anyone, maybe they could try and explain to us installers how it would benefit anyone, homeowner or installers?

From another article I have seen the figure of 6,000 boilers a day are replaced in the UK, now most of these are handled by sole traders and SMEs I should imagine, and the majority are dealt with quickly. If the boiler exchange was a distress change, where the boiler has broken down and is not repairable, its changed quickly, so the customer is least inconvenienced and has their heating back on. With this PAS2035 the process would take much longer, leaving homeowners cold.

As an installer, I don’t want this creeping into our everyday jobs when we’re changing boilers, and  no one else does. We must nip this in the bud before they even consider extending this scheme, so we need to stand together as an industry and say; ‘enough is enough’.

What we need to do is contact our local MPs and let them know we will not except this infringement on our ability to work. Just so you know I am not just making this up, here is a recent article about it in Installer magazine https://www.installeronline.co.uk/pas-2035-ill-pass-says-worcester-bosch-groups-neil-schofield/

So let’s start a discussion and get the message out to as many installers as possible, we need at least 10,000 installers to contact their MP to show we are not happy about this.

You can find your local MP HERE

Thank you for reading.