Gas Tag
Liverpool
Gas Tag’s innovative, real-time gas safety monitoring solution, aimed at protecting people’s homes from the dangers of unregistered gas engineers, could help to eliminate the 1.1 million unsafe gas checks that are carried in the UK every year.
Six Stories, Six Boroughs tells the story of a business from each borough of the Liverpool City Region that has used support from the Local Growth Hub as a springboard to success. In this article we take a look at the business from Liverpool, Gas Tag.
Gas Tag was founded in early 2015 with the aim of changing an industry that had not adapted to using technology to make homes safer. It offers a real-time gas safety monitoring solution that is aimed at protecting people’s homes from the dangers of unregistered gas engineers.
According to Gas Tag, its solution is the only one of its kind and could help to eliminate the 1.1 million unsafe gas checks that are carried in the in 23.2 million UK homes with gas devices every year.
The system consists of three main components. The ‘Gas Tag’ itself is a small NFC tag that is attached to a gas device and is scanned to evidence that work has taken place at a property. The free Gas Tag app is used by engineers to scan the tag and to verify their credentials and guide them through a best practice workflow of gas work, capturing all details of work conducted for the landlord to evidence compliance. Finally, an online portal acts as a register of all Gas Tag-verified works conducted.
After its initial launch, Gas Tag raised seed money from early investors, but it was struggling to make a mark as a result of a limited network of connections with other businesses based in the Liverpool City Region and lacking credibility as a result. The business approached the Local Growth Hub, which was able to help it make vital connections to key partners and stakeholders.
Manging Director Paul Durose says:
“A lot of the professionals that we are working with to this day were first brought to our attention via our involvement with the Local Growth Hub.”
The business raised private equity money in early 2018 to expand the business and, in November 2018, it was awarded New Business of the Year at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards. It now employs 98 full-time UK-based employees.
Gas Tag’s aim is to put one of its tags in every UK home with a gas device. Its partnership with the Gas Safe Register is helping it to achieve that goals. With the technology able to provide proof that work has been done on site by qualified engineers and that all work is compliant with best practice and industry standards.