Range cooker faults: hob codes, the gas side, who to call

Where a code can appear on a range cooker

Before you look anything up, know what can and cannot show a code. On most range cookers the only display that reports faults is the induction hob, in the small zone displays rather than on a central panel. The ovens are generally controlled by a mechanical thermostat and a timer, and across every brand in this corpus — Belling, Stoves, New World, Smeg, AGA, Falcon, Leisure — not one publishes an oven code table. The gas side publishes nothing anywhere: no numeric code exists for a gas oven or hotplate on any of them. So a character on a range cooker is a hob code, a hob status character such as H or P, or the timer telling you something.

Which brand wrote your table also matters more than usual. Glen Dimplex publish two induction tables for Belling and Stoves and they do not carry the same codes: the 2025-generation guides list ER03, E1 or E2, E3 or E4 and LO; the 2022-generation manual lists ER21, ER400, E2, E6, E8 and ER03. If your manual has E6 and E8, you are on the older table; if it has E3, E4 and LO, the newer. New World is the same platform with no working support site, so the Stoves and Belling pages are the closest honest answer. Falcon books are Rangemaster documents word for word. Smeg are the only range cooker manufacturer who publish real meanings on their own domain, and even their two induction articles disagree. AGA confirm their cookers generate codes and publish no meanings at all. Leisure publish no codes, so a character on a Leisure is a setting. And if your cooker is a Rangemaster, its codes are documented on this site's hob pages rather than here — the E3 there is a pan test, not a fault.

What a hob code means: four things

Something on the glass, or something wet. ER03 on a Belling or Stoves and Er03 on a Smeg mean an object or liquid on the control area, cleared by removing it and cleaning; Glen Dimplex add that no key should be touched for more than ten seconds. The pan symbol means no pan, or one that is not magnetic. AGA name E2 and E6 on the eR7i as codes associated with poor-quality or unsuitable cookware, and warn that continued use may damage the hob. Rangemaster's E3 has the cleanest test in the category: take the pan off, wait thirty seconds, switch the empty zone on — if the code returns with nothing on it, it is the hob; if not, it was the pan.

Overheating. E1 or E2 on the newer Glen Dimplex table is the over-heat indicator, from an empty pan or one boiled dry, with a published remedy of removing the pans and waiting about thirty minutes. E2 on a Smeg or Stoves clears when the zone cools. ER21 is the control unit cutting off because the electronics are overheating: allow the appliance to cool. Falcon's E2 over-temperature sends you to check the installation and ventilation. E8 on the older Glen Dimplex table and Smeg's E8 concern the cooling fan; clearing the air inlet is the owner's part.

The wiring or the supply. U400 — ER400 on older Stoves documents — means the cooker has been connected wrongly. Six manufacturers publish a version of it, and on a new cooker it almost always means the installer has to come back, not the manufacturer. On a cooker that has worked for years, something has been disturbed: it was pulled out for cleaning, a connection has loosened with heat cycling, or an electrician has been in the consumer unit. Falcon publish that the control switches off after about a second and the code stays until an installer or qualified repair engineer has been. Belling's E3 or E4 is different and unique in the category: "Possible issue with electricity supply", the voltage too high or too low, with a remedy of switching off at the wall and contacting the local electricity board. Note whether lights elsewhere dip or brighten before you ring; that is the first question. Neither of these is an appliance repair, and neither is yours: what is behind the terminal cover on a hardwired 30 or 32 amp circuit is fixed wiring that has to meet BS 7671, and while remaking a connection is a repair rather than notifiable work under Part P, a new cooker circuit is notifiable in England and Wales and the Welsh Approved Document adds extensions to kitchen circuits.

An internal fault. Er followed by a number on a Falcon or Rangemaster is, in their words, an internal technical fault that cannot be rectified by the user. Smeg's E5, E9 and EA are a voltage signal, a defective inductor sensor and a power board respectively, each with "if error persists, an engineer will be needed". AGA's n 3.11-style codes appear on the handset and the only published action is to read the number to AGA Service. Ring with the exact string.

The resets that are published

There is no single reset for a range cooker and the manufacturers give three answers. Glen Dimplex: switch the appliance off at the wall for a few minutes to let the electronics reset, and if the code reappears when power is restored, contact customer support. Leisure are the most precise: disconnect at the circuit breaker, wait twenty seconds, reconnect. Smeg publish five minutes off for one code only, E6, and a specific remedy per code otherwise — ERR4 on a pyrolytic oven is switch off and on and wait a few minutes before selecting a new cleaning cycle. There is no reset for U400 on any make, because the appliance is reporting how it has been connected. AGA publish no reset sequence at all.

Two things that look like faults and are settings: showroom mode on a Smeg (SHO or S on the display; no heating is possible) is turned off through the secondary menu, and a flashing clock after a power cut on Glen Dimplex and Leisure cookers means the time must be set before the ovens will work — the commonest reason an oven "will not turn on". Both cost nothing, and both are booked as repairs every week. LO on a Belling and the padlock on a timer are child locks.

Isolating a cooker with no plug

Every piece of appliance advice begins with unplugging it. A full-width range cooker has no plug: it is hardwired to a dedicated 30 or 32 amp circuit, and Rangemaster and Falcon print in capitals that it must not be connected to an ordinary domestic power point. What there is instead is a switch on the wall — Belling call it the isolator switch — and it is deliberately not above the cooker. AGA publish the rule: not immediately above, but within two metres. So look along the worktop to either side for a large square switch, often with a neon and sometimes labelled Cooker. If you cannot find one, the consumer unit has a breaker for the cooker circuit, typically 30 or 32 amp, and that isolates it just as well. Check it worked: the display goes dark and the fan stops.

One exception, and it is the manufacturers' own. If the cooling fan is still running after cooking, let it finish. Glen Dimplex publish that the fan can run for around an hour, that this is normal because the ovens are well insulated, and that you should not switch the cooker off at the wall before it has stopped completely — the fan is taking the heat out. Leisure's answer to the same complaint is three words: this is not a fault. The bound is temperature: Glen Dimplex publish that the fan runs on a thermal switch, so a fan still running when the cooker has been cold to the touch for hours, or one that starts on a cooker nobody has used, is a switch or sensor held on — a fault, and an engineer's — rather than insulation doing its job. Where a supply fault is suspected, as on E3 or E4, isolating takes priority.

Smaller freestanding cookers under about three kilowatts can genuinely be on a plug. Know which you own before you need to know quickly.

The gas side

A dual fuel or all-gas range cooker publishes no codes, so everything on the gas side is a behaviour, and one behaviour has a published answer almost nobody finds. A gas oven that lights, burns for the best part of a minute and dies is usually the flame supervision device. Belling state that after the appliance has been switched off at the wall it must be left sixty seconds before the main oven is used, or the interrupter shuts the oven down within a minute — a design feature, in their words, not a fault. Smeg publish that an accidental flame-out trips a safety device that cuts the gas even with the tap open, and that the knob must be returned to off and left at least sixty seconds before relighting. Falcon publish a sixty-second wait for relighting a burner. Time it; thirty seconds is not enough. Hold the control in for the full period the manual specifies before releasing it, because the thermocouple has to warm in the flame before it will hold the valve open.

If it dies again after two properly timed attempts, stop. Repeatedly lighting a gas appliance that will not hold is not a diagnostic step. Work on the gas side of a cooker — the thermocouple, the valve, a burner that clicks and will not catch after the crowns have been checked and dried, the connection and the stability chain if the cooker has to move — is legally restricted in Great Britain to Gas Safe registered engineers, and the manufacturers make correct installation by a registered person a condition of the warranty. What is yours is waiting, cleaning and reseating the flame-spreader crowns with their holes aligned to the igniters, and technique on a simmer setting.

If you can smell gas, do not touch any switch at all, including to turn something off. Leave the property and ring the national gas emergency line from outside.

The safety notice

The one danger-rated page in this category is not a code. The Office for Product Safety and Standards' live report finds that certain Belling, Stoves and New World gas range cookers with a gas grill, made by Glen Dimplex Home Appliances and bought between 2010 and 2022 in 110cm, 100cm and 90cm sizes, can produce extremely dangerous levels of carbon monoxide when used with the grill door closed. The risk is rated serious; when the regulator intervened in November 2022 it put the figure at more than 66,000 appliances and the manufacturer agreed to visit every home containing one. The programme is presented as ongoing.

The interim instruction is narrow: use the gas grill only with the door open, and never as an oven or a space heater — the manufacturer's own wording is that the grill cavity is designed for open door grilling. The free modification is booked on 0800 110 5728. The affected model lists are on the Belling and Stoves safety pages; New World owners must use those too, because the domain the government report points them to is dead. The model number is on the rating plate behind the main oven door, nine digits beginning 4444. If you have sold the cooker on, ring anyway so the manufacturer can trace the new owner. This is a separate programme from the one on Belling 60cm gas cookers, which has its own number, 0800 093 9945. A carbon monoxide alarm is sensible in any home with a gas appliance and is not a substitute for the modification.

Who to call, and what it costs

• Nobody, for most of the category. Pan, wet control, over-heat, residual heat, a locked hob, showroom mode, a flashing clock, a fan running on: every one is free and every one is booked as a repair. The Glen Dimplex fan run-on modification, where offered, is free of charge.
• The installer or a registered electrician for U400 or ER400 — nothing if the installer corrects their own work; otherwise an electrician checking and remaking the connection, bracketed at up to £150 on the cross-brand page and £90 to £300 on Smeg's where the cooker circuit itself needs altering — and for Belling's E3 or E4 once the network operator has ruled out the supply.
• A qualified appliance engineer for a code that survives the published reset: Smeg's E8 fan is £90 to £260, E9 sensor £120 to £300, and EA power board up to £350 on an older appliance; a Leisure oven that stays cold after the clock, knob and keylock have been checked is an element or thermostat, up to about £220; a Smeg ERR4 door lock up to £240. AGA route work to their own engineers or authorised distributors, and an induction module can reach £450.
• A Gas Safe registered engineer for any gas-side fault that survives the sixty-second wait: the code pages bracket a thermocouple or flame supervision device at up to £160 on an oven and £200 on a hotplate, fitted.

Most of the value in this category is knowing what not to book. Codes on the hob of a Rangemaster or a stand-alone hob are covered by Hob showing H, L, F or U400: what it means.

Sources

• Belling and Stoves 100/110cm electric induction documentation (August 2025) and the Glen Dimplex induction manual part 084006000 v03 (October 2022): the two code tables, the catch-all reset, the cooling fan instruction, LO and the timer padlock.
• Belling gas cooker manual (the sixty-second interrupter); Smeg Portofino CPF9IPBL manual 91477A595 (flame-out wait, ERR4); Falcon Deluxe 1000 Dual Fuel U110172-07 and Falcon 900S Induction U110267-05c from rangemaster.co.uk (U400, Er codes, relight wait, isolation before cleaning).
• Smeg UK support articles "Induction errors" (a_id/417, March 2023 and a_id/135, December 2018), "SHO or S symbol" (a_id/29) and pyrolytic oven codes (a_id/137).
• AGA eR7 and eR7i user guides (LPRT 517763, LPRT 518049): error codes on the handset, E2 and E6, the 30/32 A supply and isolator siting.
• Leisure Cookmaster CK100D210 manual (twenty-second reset, troubleshooting table, no code table).
• OPSS product safety report 2205-0240, Glen Dimplex Home Appliances gas range cookers with gas grill, updated 2 November 2022, and the regulator's news release of the same date; Belling and Stoves gas safety notice pages.
• Rangemaster RMB60HPEIGL induction hob guide for the E3 test, via this site's hob pages.
• Cost brackets are those on the code pages named, each with its own sourcing.