If you still haven’t completed your MTC transition inspections then you really need to get your arse in gear! If you don’t, then you risk your FENSA account being frozen from Monday 9th June. This is the information according to FENSA:

From the 9th June 2014 FENSA will freeze your accounts. To unfreeze your account, you will need to contact FENSA from the 9th June 2014.

1.    FENSA has a dedicated Transition Helpline for Non-Transitioned Registered Businesses to contact:

Transition helpline: 020 7397 7208
Transition email: transitions@fensa.org.uk 

2.    When contacting this dedicated Transition email and helpline, you will be required to:

  • Commit to undertaking a Transition Inspection before the 1st September 2014
  • Provide a contact name and telephone number which will be passed to our inspection body (the BBA).

At this point, your FENSA account will be unfrozen. Our inspections body (the BBA) will then contact you to  arrange a Transition Inspection on a notifiable in process installation to take place before the 1st September 2014.

Registered Businesses with ‘frozen’ FENSA accounts will be prevented from:

  • Registering notifiable installations
  • Having the company listing publicly available on the FENSA website

3.    From the 1st September 2014, where Non-Transitioned Registered Businesses fail to follow these procedures and fail to inform FENSA of a notifiable installation for a Transition Inspection, the following additional sanctions will apply:

  • Your FENSA account will be frozen until a Transition Inspection has been successfully undertaken.
  • Failure to complete a Transition Inspection by the 31st December 2014 may result in your registration being suspended and the issuing of a 28 day notice of registration removal.

Comply

Comply Or Else!

All is not lost it seems though if you haven’t got your affairs in order by next Monday. Providing you tell FENSA that you’ll promise to get your MTC business done by 1st September, your account will be unfrozen and you can get back to trading as normal so long as you get your inspections done.

However, for those who decide they want to be very militant about it and refuse for whatever reason to have an inspection done by the last day of the year, they can expect to have their FENSA registration taken away from them in 28 days.

My thoughts? Good! It’s about time FENSA finally got tough and started threatening specific actions for those who don’t comply. Yes I know I have just recently complained about the amount of extra red tape being put up right now. But I also believe strongly in punishing those that try and flout the laws of the land while the good honest guys slave away trying to get it right. For too long cowboys have found it all too easy to continue to trade and steal business from the honest and hard working companies out there.

Now though, it should be fairly easy for organisations like FENSA to publish a list of those companies who haven’t done their MTC inspections so that homeowners can be helped to choose the very best company for them. Because that’s what I think needs to happen. If the threat of action is really going to be taken seriously, companies need to know that if they don’t comply with MTC law, the public are going to know about it. It’s no good FENSA keeping a secret list of non-conformers in a back office for no one to see. A company is still going to be able to trade whether they are FENSA registered or not, MTC compliant or not. It’s happening right now. So crack that list out FENSA, let customers know who is fully up to date with the legislation and who isn’t and lets start really helping the good guys out there and let the dinosaurs and cowboys fall very quickly by the wayside.