A self-employed handyman in Birmingham has been sentenced for carrying out illegal gas work that posed an immediate danger to life, after falsely claiming to be on the Gas Safe Register.
Jaroslaw Mazan was hired by landlords to install a boiler at a property in Birmingham in 2023. The tenant, suspicious of his credentials, checked the Gas Safe Register website and found no evidence of his registration.
An inspector from Gas Safe Register attended the property in December 2023 and discovered an immediately dangerous gas leak on the boiler pipework, along with several other potentially dangerous defects. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) launched an investigation, which revealed that Mazan was not competent to carry out gas work and was not registered on the Gas Safe Register.
HSE guidance states that only registered individuals should perform gas work, and unqualified work can lead to gas leaks, fires, explosions, and carbon monoxide poisoning. In this case, no one was injured, but the work was illegal and extremely dangerous.
Mazan pleaded guilty to breaching the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 at Dudley Magistrates’ Court on June 12. He received a 26-week suspended sentence and was ordered to pay £500 in compensation to the tenant.
HSE Inspector Harry Shaw said: “This dangerous boiler fitting was a disaster waiting to happen, and the resultant gas leak could easily have caused a lethal explosion. The tenant did the right thing – and quite possibly saved themselves from serious harm – by checking the Gas Safe register and alerting inspectors when they realised Jaroslaw Mazan was unregistered. My message to anyone getting gas work carried out is simple; always use a Gas Safe-registered engineer, and if you aren’t sure of someone’s credentials, it only takes two minutes to check.”
The HSE prosecution was brought by enforcement lawyer Matthew Reynolds and paralegal officer Stephen Grabe.
