Ever wondered if those rogue companies that claim to be FENSA registered but actually aren’t ever get caught? Well it seems like they do, and in Willesden, justice was handed down in the form of a heft £6k fine.

Willesden hands down £6k fine

The company in question is Bright Windows (UK) Ltd in Willesden. They had been claiming to their customers that they were indeed a FENSA registered company, when they weren’t. Obviously this news caught wind with someone, and the owners of the company were taken to court.

Read local media report

Personally, it’s nice to see rogue FENSA claimers being caught and punished for their flouting of the rules. However I’m prepared to put money on the fact that there are many, many other companies claiming to be registered with FENSA, or similar schemes, when in fact they are not.

I would happily support some sort of investigation into the industry to try and weed out any further potential rogues companies claiming to be registered to a self-certification scheme. And I do think it’s something that could actually be done.

Data companies could lend a hand

It’s often claimed that finding these rogue companies is too big a task. That there are too many companies to search through, and that it’s easier to find and fine the companies when anomalies are thrown up. But I disagree.

We have large data companies specific to our industry, like Insight Data, who have access to the whole sector. I think it could be fairly easy for a business like that, along with a Government trading body, like Trading Standards, to work together to cross-reference and check off those who are actually genuinely registered to a self-certification. By doing this, it should throw up the cases where their self-certification isn’t clear, and could be investigated further. This way any potential dodgers could be found and rightly brought to justice should they be found to be falsely advertising themselves as FENSA registered.

Do you agree? Do we need to be doing more to weed out these rogues? Should companies be fined more than the £6k handed down by the court in Willesden? All comments welcome in the section below.

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