"but the increase could be partly explained by additional scrutiny prompted by the introduction of the national incident recording system (IRS) in April 2009."

Years ago there were complaints that the fire service would often attribute a fire to electrical causes when there wasn't any obvious other cause - (charred wiring and appliances looking pretty much the same after a fire whether they caused the ignition or were just the victim of a fire started by something else in the vicinity). I do wonder if there has been a tendency to revert to old habits.

   - Andy.

Well I read it as implying  part P should never have have introduced in the way it was, and it failed to achieve its objective. We have more paperwork and perhaps more traceability but less folk out there just fixing stuff before it goes wrong..  We know that it removed from the pool of cheaper labour someexperienced folk who maybe were approaching retirement, or operated in a small way that made registration uneconomic. That probably in turn meant that at the small jobs /pub electrician end of the market this left more of the less conscientious. Also perhaps the increase in the cost of small jobs that may have been borderline DIY  being put off until never. If that is the reason, it is not without parallel - there was a slight but statistically significant reduction in accidents in New Zealand relative to Australia after they re-permitted certain types of DIY wiring in the 1990s.

There is a cost to regulation that requires a paper trail, if only the labout time lost to complying with it.

Mike

The siren calls for yet more stringent controls over who can conduct electrical works will only result in yet another increase in the costly parasitic bureaucratic burden upon the shoulders of existing hard working electricians at the coal face who are already facing increased costs in other areas such as fuel and insurance.

The article doesn't take into account the fact that several million more people from third world countries have entered the UK who are used to third world wiring standards and will continue their ways until they suffer demise from such practices. By proposing the introduction of yet more controls is only treating the symptoms rather than the cause. Rather akin to placing a bucket under a leaking pipe rather than repairing the pipe itself.The recent introduction of the compulsory fitting of AFDDs are yet another symptom of this.

Be careful what you wish for - there are plenty of us out there who try to keep your world up and running on a day to day basis, yet there seems to be a predilection from officialdom to regulate us out of existence, or at least make our services unaffordable to those who need them most.

Sounds like scaremongering nonsense in order to reinforce the promotion of the fitting of AFDDs to me. Really, the IET should know better.