Inadequate inspections on the safety of wiring in buildings across England are increasing the risk of fires, E&T has found. A flawed regulatory system has sparked a race to the bottom, with some businesses profiting at the expense of the public’s safety.
Please get in touch with any comments/thoughts you may have
Actually there is very little point in introducing new rules that are not followed, or are unreasonable to follow. It seems that most electricians cannot do inspection to the level that those who dream up the regulations seem to expect, at any cost that is proportionate to the likely value of lives or property saved, so not requiring them to do so may be more sensible. (*)
We must also beware of a fast track to train inspectors., the result may be similar to an EPC, where the expert may well be a "hollow professional" and reliant on a 'computer says no' approach, which maybe just about works for thermal assessment of an estate of houses all with cavity wall insulation, but is likely to fail at the first hurdle of lights that are a mix of 2 and 3 plate and not exactly as per the OSG.
There is a very real risk, that as once folk get a taste for not bothering to either understand or think about one set of rules, they are likely to extend the same attitude to the rest. Actually in much domestic building this may have already happened.
(the same 'ah sod it' effect can be seen if you watch traffic - once one car starts speeding it is very likely those behind it will also )
Rules and registers on their own add costs, but do not alone necessarily ensure any improvement.
Take as a cautionary tale if you must part P - before it was lightened up in 2012 - did it alter the prevailing trends for fires and electrocutions as expected ?
Well, only if you very carefully cherry pick the two before and after years you wish to compare. (Niciec and ESF I'm looking at you..)
I did some analysis of this for the 2012 consultation into part P, and it was very clear that the trends of falling rates of fire and electrocution did not start to fall faster post the introduction of part P and competent person schemes, if anything the rate of fall off rather reduced, post part P, so not at all the desired effect. The data is now ~ a decade out of date but attached for anyone interested as an example of how to see if a supposed improvement is actually working as intended or not.
PDF
We really do not really require a regime of inspections and some register of competent inspectors that ends up being similarly unhelpful.
Mike
(* so, say a life lost is £1 million, and a house damaged by fire is £500k. If on average it costs £150 to do an inspection, it may sound like a super saving. Not so, unless there are so many fires and deaths prevented by those electrical inspections, (and as above Grenfell would not have been) , that is only worthwhile if not inspecting would, with good confidence, have resulted in an incident of that magnitude a rate of 1 per 10,000 inspections. Not a near miss, but a full blown incident... )
If not then it does more good to spend that money saved on some other measure, like testing water heaters for Legionnaires or stair carpets for loose fittings, so long as those causes of fatality remain more prevalent.
