Knowing that F-Gas duties exist is not the same as knowing whether you are meeting them. This is the practical version: a step by step route from not being sure to being able to prove it, written for someone who has a day job. Our separate article explains what the duties are. This one is about getting from wherever you are to compliant.
In this guide
First, find out if this is yours
The duties sit with the operator, meaning the business that controls the equipment. Not the installer, and not usually whoever owns the freehold. Responsibility follows control, so if you are a tenant with air conditioning in your unit and you decide when it runs and who services it, the duties are almost certainly yours.
Leases complicate that, and the answer is written in yours rather than in an article. Some put maintenance on the landlord, some squarely on the tenant, and some are vague enough that nobody has done anything for years, which is the worst of the three. Read the sections on plant, alterations and repair, and get any ambiguity clarified in writing now rather than during an insurance claim.
Step one: find every system
Almost every business we survey has at least one system nobody mentioned. Walk the site properly, not from memory and not from a drawing. Then go outside, count the outdoor units and match them to indoor units, because a mismatch means you have missed something.
- Every office and meeting room unit, including the ones in private offices
- Anything cooling a server or comms cupboard, which is frequently the one that gets forgotten
- Kitchen and catering refrigeration, cellar cooling, cold rooms and display cabinets
- Systems in areas you took over from a previous occupier
- Systems that are switched off, broken or disconnected but still hold refrigerant
That last one is the one people argue about. A system that has not run for three years still has gas in it. Leaving it on the wall because removing it costs money does not make it disappear from your responsibilities, and if it is leaking quietly it is doing so entirely unnoticed.
Step two: work out what is in each one
Each entry needs two facts: which refrigerant is in it, and how much. Both are usually on the nameplate on the outdoor unit. Sometimes it is legible. Sometimes it has spent a decade facing the weather on a rooftop in Redcar and it is not. Where it is gone or wrong, the manufacturer documentation or an engineer with the model number can establish it.
Record it properly now: refrigerant type, charge, make and model, and where in the building it is. This list is the spine of everything else.
Why kilowatts are the wrong number
This trips up more people than anything else in F-Gas. Your obligations are not based on how powerful the system is. What matters is the refrigerant charge expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent, which combines the weight of gas in the system with how potent that particular refrigerant is as a greenhouse gas.
The consequence is counter-intuitive. Two systems that look identical on the wall can sit in different bands because they use different refrigerants. An older system on a high potency gas can carry a heavier obligation than a newer, physically larger one. So you cannot eyeball this or reason from the size of the box.
Step three: establish your checking obligation
With the type and charge established, the carbon dioxide equivalent can be worked out, and that decides what you have to do. Broadly, the more refrigerant a system holds in those terms, the more often it must be leak checked by a certified engineer. Below a threshold, no scheduled checks are required at all. Above it, the intervals tighten as the charge rises. The largest systems also need automatic leak detection fitted, and where working leak detection is in place the required interval is longer.
We have deliberately not printed the thresholds and intervals here, and that is not us being coy. Taking them off a web page and applying them yourself is how businesses end up either over-servicing equipment that does not need it or under-servicing equipment that does. Both cost you. The current figures are published on gov.uk, and having your systems assessed by someone who does this every week is the sensible route.
Step four: audit the records you have
This is where most businesses find their real problem. The work has been done properly for years. They cannot prove any of it.
For each system that requires leak checking, records need to cover the refrigerant type and quantity installed, anything added and why, anything recovered, the dates and results of every check, who did the work and under what certification, and any repair with the follow up check. Records must be kept for a defined period and produced if you are asked for them.
So go and look. Not “I think the engineer leaves a sheet”. Actually find them, then ask a blunt question: if somebody wanted the leak check history on the cassette in the back meeting room, could you put it in front of them within the hour?
Step five: check who is doing the work
Installation, servicing, leak checking and decommissioning must be done by certified engineers. That is the law, and using someone who is not certified does not transfer the problem to them. It stays yours.
So ask. Get your contractor to evidence their company certification and their engineers’ qualifications, and keep a copy with your records. Any reputable firm will send it the same day. If asking causes friction, that is the answer. The same applies to anyone quoting for new work: if an installer cannot show you F-Gas certification, walk away, whatever the price says. A cheap installation by someone who should not be touching refrigerant is a liability with a discount on it.
Step six: put it on a schedule
Everything above is a one off exercise. This is what stops you doing it again in three years.
The businesses that get F-Gas right are, almost without exception, the ones where compliance is a by-product of something that happens anyway. The engineer visits on a schedule, the check gets done because it is on the visit, the record gets filed because filing it is part of the visit, and nobody has to remember any of it. The ones that struggle treat each check as a task somebody has to diarise, because eventually somebody is on holiday, or leaves. That is the honest case for a planned maintenance contract, and it is not really about the servicing. It is that compliance stops depending on anyone’s memory.
While you are there, flag anything running on an older refrigerant. Higher global warming potential gases are being phased down over time, which makes topping up an ageing system steadily more expensive, and our separate article on the F-Gas rules covers where that is heading. Knowing now means you choose when to replace it, rather than finding out when the compressor goes on the hottest Monday of the year.
The gaps we find most often
Across the businesses we survey around Middlesbrough, Stockton on Tees, Billingham, Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington, the same handful of things come up repeatedly. None come from carelessness. They come from nobody ever having sat down and gone through it.
- The forgotten system. The comms cupboard unit, or the one in the area you took over from the last occupier. Nobody serviced it because nobody knew it was theirs.
- The records that exist somewhere. The work was done, the paperwork went to an email address belonging to someone who left three years ago.
- The tenant and landlord gap. Both assumed the other was dealing with it. Neither was.
- The multi-site drift. Head office has it perfect, the branch that joined the portfolio later has never been touched.
- The slow leak nobody noticed. Refrigerant escapes gradually, the system works harder for months, the bill climbs, and eventually something expensive fails. This is the one that costs real money, and the checks exist precisely to catch it.
Where to get a straight answer
Nothing here is legal advice, and we are not going to pretend an article can tell you whether your systems are compliant. The current rules, thresholds and intervals are published on gov.uk, and that is the authority. What we can do is come and look.
We are F-Gas registered, based on North Ormsby Road in Middlesbrough, and we cover roughly twenty miles of Teesside: Stockton on Tees, Thornaby, Billingham, Norton, Yarm, Eaglescliffe, Ingleby Barwick, Redcar, Marske, Saltburn, Guisborough, Marton, Hartlepool, Peterlee and Darlington. Our F-Gas compliance management does what the steps above describe: we survey what you have, establish your obligations, carry out the checks, and keep the records. The site survey is free and there is no obligation. Ring us on 01642 680 873.
