EICR Basic Insulation on Meter Tails

I concur with the first two replies.  For my two-penn'th, one of the Housing Associations I worked for had an agreement/"Special Relationship" with the local DNO giving us permission to access and "interfere" with their equipment so that we didn't have to keep calling them out to faults in multiple residences such as the various blocks of flats we owned.  Since you are presumably dealing with social or council housing, your Local Authority may have a similar agreement.  But for us to pull a service fuse still required appropriate training and wearing of all the anti-flash PPE that a DNO operative is required to wear.  In the absence of all three of these (formal permission from the equipment owner, recorded competency, anti-flash PPE) you should not pull a service fuse (despite what a properly qualified and experienced sparky might do in the real world) and you should tell your boss accordingly.  In the absence of an agreement between your employer and the DNO you should not break the little lead seal on the service fuse or the meter, which means that even if the meter is "insulated" as @Alcomax comments, you are still not "allowed" to open the terminal box at the bottom -- but then that would still expose live terminal screws that you would be considering playing with...


Of course, if you are in a suite or block of flats with remote service heads and your C2 is actually after the solid link (red service head) local to the flat, the distance may be such that the chance of flash from pulling the local red service "fuse" is reduced to acceptable level or risk.  Nonetheless, when working for a HA or Local Authority, I wouldn't risk it without written risk assessment.  Residential work is not like Domestic, their governance, compliance and H&S are rightly far more strict and "proper" and you risk getting yourself in trouble and your supervisor in more trouble (summary dismissal for gross misconduct) for instructing you to do this.

I concur with the first two replies.  For my two-penn'th, one of the Housing Associations I worked for had an agreement/"Special Relationship" with the local DNO giving us permission to access and "interfere" with their equipment so that we didn't have to keep calling them out to faults in multiple residences such as the various blocks of flats we owned.  Since you are presumably dealing with social or council housing, your Local Authority may have a similar agreement.  But for us to pull a service fuse still required appropriate training and wearing of all the anti-flash PPE that a DNO operative is required to wear.  In the absence of all three of these (formal permission from the equipment owner, recorded competency, anti-flash PPE) you should not pull a service fuse (despite what a properly qualified and experienced sparky might do in the real world) and you should tell your boss accordingly.  In the absence of an agreement between your employer and the DNO you should not break the little lead seal on the service fuse or the meter, which means that even if the meter is "insulated" as @Alcomax comments, you are still not "allowed" to open the terminal box at the bottom -- but then that would still expose live terminal screws that you would be considering playing with...


Of course, if you are in a suite or block of flats with remote service heads and your C2 is actually after the solid link (red service head) local to the flat, the distance may be such that the chance of flash from pulling the local red service "fuse" is reduced to acceptable level or risk.  Nonetheless, when working for a HA or Local Authority, I wouldn't risk it without written risk assessment.  Residential work is not like Domestic, their governance, compliance and H&S are rightly far more strict and "proper" and you risk getting yourself in trouble and your supervisor in more trouble (summary dismissal for gross misconduct) for instructing you to do this.