HETAS Champions Sweeping Competency with New Scheme Launch
HETAS has this week launched a new scheme offering sweeps, wood burning stove installers and servicing technicians an additional trusted badge of approval which will vouch for their sweeping and servicing competency.
The organisation’s Sweep and Service Scheme has been specifically designed for professional chimney sweeps to bolster their credentials and further improve consumer confidence in their business, whilst also showcasing their expertise and compliance to the very latest standards.
With a surge in consumer interest, the HETAS website, last September saw an increase of over 230% in chimney sweep searches, a trend that continued throughout the heating season, with consumers choosing to put their trust in HETAS registered businesses. As a result the organisation has identified the need to support sweeps in this way.
The scheme offers practical routes to HETAS approval depending on the applicant’s level of experience and qualifications – no matter whether the individual is fully qualified, an existing member of another professional sweeping association; or still gaining knowledge and experience, there is a way to join the scheme or complete the learning journey and register. The scheme offers registration for sweeping and servicing, just sweeping, or servicing separately.
Assessing an applicant’s mix of skills and knowledge, the appropriate route will be determined by the HETAS team who will be on hand to support throughout the registration process. The applicant then follows a straightforward process (according to their designated route).
Offering a host of benefits, the new scheme will allow those registrants to use the recognised HETAS brand and scheme logo, have a dedicated business profile page on the HETAS website, allow access to the HETAS shop including a range of equipment and support from the HETAS Technical Helpline to name but a few.
Bruce Allen, CEO for HETAS, comments:
The past year has seen an overwhelming consumer appetite for wood burning stoves due to the cost-of-living crisis. Demand for chimney sweeps is therefore at an all-time high; yet we are seeing consumers becoming more discerning about the competency of the tradespeople they welcome within their homes.
“Our aims for our new Sweep and Service Scheme are, to improve safety and environmentally responsible burning via a standardised approach to sweeping competence and compliance; to deliver valued benefits to sweeps such as far-reaching consumer promotion and accessible training and accreditation; and to provide consumers with the assurance that HETAS vouches for the competency of their chosen chimney sweep and servicing businesses.
By incentivising our registered sweeps to undertake refresher training, upskill and leverage the exposure that our website listing offers, we trust that they will be well equipped to meet the needs of their current and future customers.”
As a certification body accredited by UKAS, HETAS is an independent and impartial business which operates in compliance to EN ISO 17065. For more information about the new scheme, visit the HETAS Approved Sweep & Service page.
