Scope of Part P (extra-low voltage)

So what is it exactly that you wish to see change?

It might pay you to look up the latest fatality stats caused by electric shock if you really think there's a problem.

Fair play, I think most householders would get someone suitably qualified to do the tasks listed anyway (except the last of course).

I was perhaps under the impression that things were more locked down than they are that's all. I'm pleasantly surprised really as I prefer freedoms.

Not sure why it is scary-  you are statistically much more likely to be given food poisoning at someone else's house than be electrocuted, and nearly an order of magnitude more likely to die from it.

(around 2.4 million estimated UK cases of foodborne illness occur each year)  or if you prefer only the numbers at the end of the table, a  hundred or so die each year. Of those that need medical treatment the approx breakdown is as follows.

(source PDF page 26 of this food standards agency report )

Compare with electrocution from this link 

deaths where the underlying cause was exposure to electric current; by sex and five year age group, England, 2001 to 2017
The ONS...

Of course only those where the W location code ends in '0' occurred at home and may be influenced by part P. And most are at places of trade or service (codes end in '5') or industrial/construction ( codes end in '6').
Domestic electrocutions are less than ten a year and predominantly male. Tellingly the figures from 2001-2004  (pre part P and all that) are not much different, despite both part P and the adoption of RCDs in all sorts of places where there were none before.

So, if we scrapped part P and put all the saved money into food hygiene education, would we as a society be more or less safe ?

Mike

PS perhaps we should also count electrical fires, but the stats are harder to asses, and actually by far the most are caused by cooking, again.

I presume that everyone now realises that notification is a scam, along with the "competent persons" schemes, and the micky-mouse exam which a moderately competent in English teenager could probably pass, with very little electrical knowledge, and a good deal of the trade (that actually attempts it) gets 75% or less. About 10% or so actually fail! Does this imply any form of competence?

Mike mentions fires, but actually getting a sensible statistic is very difficult indeed. Again from Grenfell, an ex fireman with no proper qualifications set himself up as a Fire Safety Inspector, and passed the grossly defective building as safe. The Fire officer in charge of the fire fighting did not attempt to evacuate the building despite the huge rate at which the fire advanced because a fire brigade document said that this was not to be attempted if a "stay in place policy" was active, ignoring the fact that the document did not properly consider a fire in more than one flat!

The causes of domestic fires investigated by officers who receive two weeks of training are unlikely to be much better than any of the above, and they do not differentiate between fixed wiring, DNO equipment or appliances. Qualified fire Engineers who carry out forensic inspections are expensive and unlikely in any fire where the losses are reasonable for the insurer to pay. The statistics are very little use except to say that cooking is much more dangerous than electricity and that there are very few deaths from electric shock in the home, for any reason. As some 60 million people use electricity and electrical equipment day-in day-out, it is probablly the safest thing that anyone does, particularly including going to bed. You are many times more likely to die falling down stairs than from electric shock. The electrical industry probably kills more people falling or driving than the electricity that seems to cause such unjustified worry.

It is likely that eating is one of the most dangerous that most of us do, I wonder how many of the cooks among you have a "Food Hygene Certificate", although the standard of that is pretty low too?

www.reddit.com/.../

Part P was introduced and the LABC notification requirements came in on the 1st January 2005, just over seventeen years ago. I was a founding member of the NAPIT scheme having been assessed in October 2004 and paying my membership fee ready for the launch, then my assessor came back after six months for a hour to check I was actually doing what I was supposed to be doing and I had my annual reassessment in January 2006. Not quite the walk in the park that some suggest joining a scheme was back then.

I was a mere child of forty eight back then, not even middle aged. What you do have to realise though is that many of the founding members of the competence schemes have retired or are due to retire. The new members that should be enrolling to replace them were barely out of nappies and had not even started primary school back then, as electricians in their early twenties now weren't even five years old back then.

So basically there is an entire new generation of electricians coming through now who should be joining the competence schemes to replace the old guys like me who are hitting retiring age.

But from anecdotal evidence I don't think these young electricians are joining the competence schemes. If you look at Facebook local group posts and Nextdoor you will see frequent requests for recommendations for an electrician to do domestic electrical work, in my local area this usually prompts a series of replies with recommendations often naming and recommending many electricians. However if you try checking for membership of an electrical competence scheme you will generally draw a blank, indeed one evening I checked over ten guys and there was not a CPS scheme member at all.

Now admittedly many of these jobs requests on social media are not notifiable jobs, but from the anecdotal evidence I have seen on social media along with who I see buying electrical materials at various wholesalers it seems fairly obvious to me that the older registered electricians are retiring and the younger guys replacing them just aren't bothering to register, as they can earn a living without CPS registration.

It seems to me that the only younger electricians who seem to be interested in CPS membership are those who want to install EV charge point equipment and the like.

Perhaps I have it wrong, but that is how things seem to be at the moment to me.

The point is Andy, the bar is far too low, and the schemes want to keep it that way because it is "cash for logos". Did you get 100% in the 18th edition exam? I thought not because I only know of two people who did out of hundreds! Strangely neither of these is what you know as an "Electrician"!

The idea I have been discussing is that the teeth behind any scheme are far too lax, whatever NAPIT did at first, and those teeth need the law behind them, not some voluntary scheme membership. There is then that there is no real competition behind these schemes since Stroma was sold to NAPIT, you are paying at least £500 for what? Is it the logo on the van or is it competence, and being shown to be competent? If it is then they should offer a rock bottom guarantee that your work is entirely satisfactory, and they pay for correction, etc. if not. If you are not perfect you are thrown out of the scheme. They should specify exactly what each member (electrician) may do and what not. The QS scheme would be dead immediately, every man certified him/herself. Inspectors would need further qualifications, probably at least a TEng, and significant experience of the job under training.

Your Facebook chaps would probably not stand much chance, as it would be illegal to employ an unregistered electrician. The question to answer is "do we need this given the risk to the public is extremely low" or should we dump the lot, no clubs, no notifications, and therefore lower prices?

@ David Stone 

You know I didn’t get 100% in my 18th Edition exam, because I posted a photo of my results sheet eight months ago in another discussion.

 RE: Videos of EICRs on Youtube 

An 18th Edition qualification doesn’t maketh the electrician, it’s just one small part of the required training.

Napit always struck me as the operator of the better scheme in all this actually, catering more fairly for the truly competent one man band with a varied portfolio of work. Niciec seemed more keen on the idea of larger companies with as far as I can tell a minimum of one fully one competent person, and lots of installers in the field whose work gets signed off by someone, who may be keen and visit every job, or may just review them from the office. It relies on most people being good, and of course most people are.  But to be successful a scheme to improve standards needs to be more than trusting.However all these schemes are not without cost, to the electrician and eventually the customers, and the problem, as described above, is that the good guys get bypassed by the cheapskates, and always have actually, part P or not.

But the killer is not who has an up to date City and Guilds cert, or whose supervisor at a distance has paid up the membership fee this season, but actually who knows what they are doing and has enough pride not to do some terrible hack-job today. To that end having a logo that shows some one made a recurring membership payment is less useful than insisting on a personal pass certificate of any kind for the person actually on-site holding the wire cutters. Especially if that cert could be revoked for poor work. But showing a certificate does not create a regular source of income for someone else so that is not what we have.

And as the figures quite starkly show that pre- and post part p incidents follow  more or less the same trends , it is very hard to claim it has done any good 17 years or not.

Mike.

Indeed. Just how many people have been electrocuted or had a fire started by the 48 Volt B.T. telephone system in most homes? The same system that allows anyone to plug in a long D.I.Y. extension lead.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/351045725339?hash=item51bbf4ac9b:g:0GYAAOxycD9TRpzh

More dangerous is a 13 Amp 140 Volt mains socket 3m from a bath tub or shower tray as permitted by the regs.

Extension lead, phone charger, falls into bath, death.

415.1.2

Historical stats.

www2.theiet.org/.../messageview.cfm

Z.