Contractors should be aware that once a Completion Cert is sent to the ECSSA Office, it will either be sent onwards to ESB, or returned to the Contractor on the same day.
We cannot continue to operate a system where the Contractor’s customers are constantly ringing to trace the whereabout of their Cert. If the Cert has gone back to the Contractor, we cannot inform the customer that the Cert has gone back for a particular reason such as, for example, the contractor has no proof of insurance, or is not a current member. Neither are we prepared to mislead the customer by pretending that a Cert has arrived from a contractor, when in fact no such Cert has reached the office.
Contractors should not attempt to buy time by transferring the blame for the delay in getting a connection from themselves to ECSSA or to the ESB.
If the contractor sends a valid Cert in good time, it will be forwarded on the same day as it is received by ECSSA to ESB. Any delay thereafter is purely an ESB matter, and if the customer is to contact anybody, it should be their local ESB office, who will be able to inform them right away whether or not a valid Cert has been posted on the ESB System for the particular installation.
By way of exception, ECSSA has facilitated a number of contractors in the past by accepting a faxed version of the Cert to speed up an urgent connection. However, we now note that the same contractors always seem to have the same urgency and to request this exceptional treatment.
Should this continue, we will have no option but to drop that service, particularly in view of the fact that once a Cert has been sent to ESB for these contractors, they become notoriously careless about sending on the actual Cert to us.