Christian Winter, 32, has been served a sentence for community service after deceiving a landload about gas safety checks. The illegal gas fitter was actually unregistered and trading under CJS Winter Plumbing and Heating Services.

Christian the unregistered gas fitter illegally installed a gas boiler at the landlords property and undertook a gas safety checks at the property owned by the landlord in Kingskerswell. The gas fitter decieved the landord by working in gas fitting at the property despite him having no competencies in gaswork or even being registered on the Gas Safe Register for gaswork, The case was heard at The Exeter Crown Court and further investigations found the he deceived the landlord using faked Gas Safe Register information including a fake registration number and produced records to this effect.

The gaswork was established to be below par and illegal when the boiler Christian had installed and also passed as safe for the three consecutive years was later inspected by a properly and legally registered member of Gas Safe. The engineer later found a range of faults with the work as classified the faults as dangerous.

When the landlord was made aware of the defects she challenged CJS Winter Plumbing and Heating Services but Mr Winter continued his deception stating repeatedly that her was legitimately a gas engineer and registered with the appropriate bodies.

In court, Mr Winter pleaded guilty to breaching several regulations including Regulation 3(3) and 3(7) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 and another regulation in Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Mr Winter was convicted to a suspended prison sentence of 1 year, he was told to undertake 200 hrs work unpaid and was ordered to pay £3,327.80 costs.