Part of the problem is that the wiring regs and now BS7671 that inherits so much from them, were never intended to be called up in legislation, and so can afford to be a bit woolly. The authors of the original regs did not need to consider every case, and to justify each regulation, as there was the 'does not really apply in this case ' defence, and this was necessary as the technology was expanding into a vaccum.

Clearly the current desire is to be more regulated, but then the decisions need to be accountable - that is if there is a recommendation or a rule it needs to be backed up by some science, and a lot of it is not.

This is quite clearly demonstrated by looking at other countries rules and their accident rates.

Consider as a noddy example the bathroom socket - fine in Germany above the sink and out of splash zone in every little bedsit and flat, a lethal danger in the UK in all but the largest bathrooms, according to the respective DIN and BS documents.

To steal a line from the 'Dire Straits' song

" Well, one of them must be wrong". Clearly only a funny UK-centric 'preference' really, as in fact the accident rates in both countries are very similar.

Or ring finals - likely to get your design  thrown out on the continent, but absolutely fine in the UK. 

Reduced or full size CPC ?

The list goes on.


Now to inspect and  decide if something is safe needs some more thought - and a realisation that actually quite a lot of what BS7671 requests is not really supported by any realistic figures or analysis of fires or electroctions, it just makes a nice consistent set of rules that we are happy with for most cases - meeting BS7671 may not be safe, and in other cases it, not meeting it may well not be dangerous.

Do we want a significantly cut down set of regs for inspections that are not as restrictive that only specify the cases that actually can be justified ?

Part of the problem is that the wiring regs and now BS7671 that inherits so much from them, were never intended to be called up in legislation, and so can afford to be a bit woolly. The authors of the original regs did not need to consider every case, and to justify each regulation, as there was the 'does not really apply in this case ' defence, and this was necessary as the technology was expanding into a vaccum.

Clearly the current desire is to be more regulated, but then the decisions need to be accountable - that is if there is a recommendation or a rule it needs to be backed up by some science, and a lot of it is not.

This is quite clearly demonstrated by looking at other countries rules and their accident rates.

Consider as a noddy example the bathroom socket - fine in Germany above the sink and out of splash zone in every little bedsit and flat, a lethal danger in the UK in all but the largest bathrooms, according to the respective DIN and BS documents.

To steal a line from the 'Dire Straits' song

" Well, one of them must be wrong". Clearly only a funny UK-centric 'preference' really, as in fact the accident rates in both countries are very similar.

Or ring finals - likely to get your design  thrown out on the continent, but absolutely fine in the UK. 

Reduced or full size CPC ?

The list goes on.


Now to inspect and  decide if something is safe needs some more thought - and a realisation that actually quite a lot of what BS7671 requests is not really supported by any realistic figures or analysis of fires or electroctions, it just makes a nice consistent set of rules that we are happy with for most cases - meeting BS7671 may not be safe, and in other cases it, not meeting it may well not be dangerous.

Do we want a significantly cut down set of regs for inspections that are not as restrictive that only specify the cases that actually can be justified ?