How I Use the Gas Safety Template with Customers in Pilla

Understanding What's Required of You

Gas appliances are common in workplaces. Ovens, cookers, boilers, water heaters. When they're installed and maintained properly, they're safe. When they're not, you're dealing with fire, explosion, gas leaks, and carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide is the one that catches people out. You can't see it, you can't smell it, and by the time you feel the symptoms, you might already be in serious trouble.

The legal basis is the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. These place specific duties on employers to maintain gas appliances, pipework, and flues in a safe condition, to use Gas Safe registered engineers for any installation, maintenance, or repair work, and to ensure adequate ventilation in rooms where gas appliances operate. The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 sits above this as the general duty to protect employees and others from risks arising from your activities.

Gas Safe Register replaced CORGI in 2009. It's the only official register of engineers legally allowed to work on gas appliances in the UK. If someone turns up to service your boiler and they're not on the register, they shouldn't be touching it. Full stop. I've seen businesses use general maintenance staff or handymen for gas work because it was cheaper or quicker. That's illegal, and it puts lives at risk.

An HSE inspector will want to see that you're using registered engineers, that your maintenance is on schedule, that your records are up to date, and that your staff know what to do if they smell gas or suspect an appliance is unsafe. The Gas Safe Register also carries out its own enforcement checks. If your gas safety arrangements are poor, the consequences range from enforcement notices to prosecution, and in the worst cases, people die.

I've worked with businesses where gas safety was treated as a tick-box exercise. Annual service booked, certificate filed, job done. But nobody checked whether the ventilation grilles in the kitchen had been blocked by new shelving. Nobody trained new staff on where the emergency shut-off valve was. The paperwork looked fine. The actual safety didn't.

Setting It Up as a Knowledge Hub Entry

I've built a gas safety template in Pilla covering the use of Gas Safe registered engineers, maintenance of pipework and appliances, ventilation requirements, staff training, reporting procedures, emergency shut-off systems, and monitoring arrangements. It gives you a structured starting point, but you need to edit it so it reflects your operation.

In the knowledge hub, create a new entry and tag it with "Health and Safety System". Use the same tag across all of your health and safety policies so they are grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set. Assign the entry to all teams so that everyone in the business can access it.

The template is designed to be edited, not just filed. Read through every section. Where it says "Company Name", replace it with your business name. Where it refers to gas appliances, list the specific appliances you have on site. If you don't have boilers, remove that reference. If you have specialist equipment like commercial combi ovens or deep fat fryers with gas connections, add them. The point is that your policy describes your workplace, not a generic one.

What I'd want to see when reviewing this:

The section on competent engineers is the foundation of the entire policy. I'd want to see that you've named your Gas Safe registered engineer or contractor, that you have a process for verifying their registration before any work starts, and that you keep copies of their Gas Safe ID cards on file. The Gas Safe Register website lets you check any engineer's registration in seconds. If you're not doing this check before every job, you're taking a risk you don't need to take.

The maintenance schedule matters more than most businesses think. Annual servicing is the minimum standard for mains gas equipment, but appliances in heavy commercial use often need more frequent attention. I'd want to see a clear schedule showing which appliances are serviced when, and evidence that it's actually being followed. A schedule that shows overdue services is worse than no schedule at all, because it proves you knew maintenance was needed and didn't do it.

The ventilation section should be specific to your premises. "Adequate ventilation" is what the regulations say, but that's not enough for a policy. Name the rooms with gas appliances, describe the ventilation arrangements in each one, and state who checks them and how often. Ventilation that was adequate when the room was set up can become inadequate when someone moves a storage rack in front of the grille.

Common mistakes I see:

The most common mistake is treating Gas Safe registration as a one-off check. Engineers' registrations can lapse, and their qualifications cover specific types of work. An engineer registered for domestic boilers is not necessarily qualified to work on commercial catering equipment. Check the registration every time, and check it covers the specific work you need done.

Maintenance records are often incomplete. I see businesses that have the annual service certificate but no record of what was actually checked or found. A good maintenance record should include the date, the engineer's name and Gas Safe number, which appliances were serviced, what was inspected, any faults found, and what action was taken. Without that detail, your records don't prove much.

The emergency shut-off section is frequently vague. "Staff should know where the gas shut-off is" is not a procedure. I want to see the location described, who is trained to operate it, when it should be used, and what happens after it's been activated. During a gas leak at a restaurant I was advising, three staff members stood in the kitchen unsure what to do because the policy said "evacuate and shut off gas" but nobody had shown them where the valve was.

Staff training records are the other gap. The template covers training requirements, but I regularly find businesses where new starters haven't been told what to do if they smell gas. Training needs to be recorded with names, dates, and content covered, and it needs to happen before someone starts working near gas appliances, not three months later when you get around to it.

Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi

Writing the policy is one thing. Making sure your team has actually read it is another. Poppi can handle the chasing so you don't have to.

If you mark the knowledge hub entry as mandatory, Poppi will track who's read it and who hasn't. You can set up automations to chase staff who are behind, notify managers when someone completes the policy, and get a regular report showing where the gaps are.

Here are three automations I'd set up for any knowledge hub policy:

Poppi

Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge

Overdue training reminders

Automatically chase team members who have mandatory policies they haven't read yet. Poppi sends the reminder so you don't have to.

Trigger

Condition

Action

Recipient

Poppi

Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge

Poppi

Emma has completed a mandatory policy

Video completion alerts

Get notified when a team member finishes reading or watching a policy, so you can track progress without chasing.

Trigger

Condition

Action

Recipient

Poppi

Emma has completed a mandatory policy

Poppi

Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.

Training gap analysis

Get a regular AI report showing which team members are behind on mandatory policies and where the gaps are across your team.

Trigger

Condition

Action

Recipient

Poppi

Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.