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.
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However, according to an E&T analysis of the available data, electrical fires have not reduced as a percentage of all fires, in fact they have increased slightly as a proportion, and are sill the second highest cause after cooking.
The article doesn't seem clear on this point - are we talking about all electrical fires (including appliances, extension leads etc.) or just those originating in the fixed installation? I'd always thought that appliance fires outweighed fixed wiring ones by quite a margin, so if they're 2nd after cooking, I'm suspicious that the numbers are including non-fixed installation fires, which seems a bit out of context for EICRs.
The 'problem' isn't just EICRs of course - it's a bigger cultural issue. I've seen "PAT" done on extension leads from making a connection to just one end, box bleeps, passed. How can you test earth continuity from just one end I asked - bloke doing it showed me the config on the tester - it was doing just an insulation test! I raised it with management who took the view that the PAT brigade were the 'experts' and as they had their bit of paper they were happy. I'm sure many of us have heard of equally dodgy MOTs.
- Andy.
I also wrote to my MP, Kwasi Kwarteng, the current Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Minister. He assured me that the proposals had been looked at by all the relevant bodies and approved, and there would be no problem!
A letting agent emailed me around one hundred and eighty job sheets for EICRs all as separate emails with a pdf. job sheet attached.
I went through them and printed a hardcopy of each job sheet, then put them in a ring binder ordered by their postcodes, with dividers to separate them into towns Worcester, Malvern, Stourport on Severn, Tewkesbury then I literally started at the beginning and trying to arrange to do two inspections a day in close proximity to each other with the intention of doing eight inspections a week leaving a day a week for the paperwork.
However there was also remedials to price and get done, so in reality I wasn't getting eight completely signed off in a week, it was taking at least a fortnight.
The general standard of the electrical installations were dire with many C1 and C2 issues.
Then Covid struck, the government should have then delayed the required completion date, but after an initial delay they said it was essential work and electricians could still go into peoples homes to work despite the general restrictions.
So initially I was not allowed to leave home and was not allowed to work, however as restrictions eased a bit I went back through the folder and pulled out all the job sheets for empty properties and started working my way through them, then I started to do the inspections where there was going to be a change of tenancy, because the transfer of tenancy could not go ahead without the EICR.
One of the first jobs I did was two empty flats over a bank in Tewkesbury High Street, I drove down the M5 and as I approached Strensham Services there was not another vehicle in sight, neither in front or behind me on either carriageway, at that point I was literally the only person on the motorway.
Tewkesbury was a ghost town, all the car parks were free with parking charges suspended, all the non-essential shops, pubs and cafes were closed, there were less than a dozen people on the streets.
I did the two inspections then went back a few days later to do the EICR repairs and some void maintenance, when I got back there were three East European builders there, they had driven up from London to do void maintenance and decorate the flats on the understanding they could live and sleep in the flats, because they were homeless and had been living in their vans for weeks being unable to book into a bed and breakfast or get any other accommodation, they said they would have returned home to Bulgaria, but were unable to get out of the UK because of Covid, so were doing this job for pocket money just to be able to live in the flats for a few weeks.
I had to replace an electric shower and realise I had not got any solder in the plumbing box, rather than try and get some from Screwfix who were restricting the products available to "essentials" then delaying your collection and making you queue for a hour in the car park I went to the local ironmongers a few doors away, their actual shop fronting the High Street was closed, so I had to go around the back to the rear entrance from where they were selling "essentials" then smile and say please nicely to get a roll of solder at half as much again as I would have normally paid.
And so it went on, add onto that I was very unhappy about what I was being told I should sign off as satisfactory and eventually I decided doing the landlords EICRS were not worth the hassle, particularly when I had to start chasing the letting agents for payment.
The suggestion that electricians were sat in cafes writing out landlords EICRs is so far off the mark it is actually laughable, it is a myth that just gets perpetuated by being included in articles like this.
The government could have quite simply extended the completion period and eased the situation, but they don't have any grasp on reality.
Another Covid related issue is the "Great retirement" which I have been muttering about since the Covid lockdowns, an economist was discussing it on Radio Four a few days ago, basically when a lot of older workers were told they had to stop going to work during the Covid lockdowns a lot of them decided that was it, they were retiring particularly those already past retirement age but still working.
As a result of this a huge number of older experienced workers have retired, including many electricians meaning there's even fewer people to do the work, when there wasn't actually enough in the first place.
I have also carried out a survey as some of you kindly submitted the "duff" EICR documents and details of reparations. There was fraud going on left right and centre Andy. Loads of new CUs, loads of false measurements, and not a lot of proper inspections. The job has to be done properly, or not at all. The Government has decided, based on public inquiry reports, that EICRs are required. We now need to sort out the WAY they are done, to make them worthwhile. The schemes are as you saw from Conor's article not really interested. They get their money so all is well. However the names they use say that they are proper controlling bodies, eg NICEIC or Certsure. Is this true? It looks very much as though these are names to give confidence in something that is very dodgy indeed.
Lets go back to 2004, when the Government were introducing Home Information Packs:
Under Part 5 of the Housing Act 2004 a Home Information Pack (HIP, on lowercase letters: hip), sometimes called a Seller's Pack, was to be provided before a property in England and Wales could be put on the open market for sale with vacant possession.
Home Information Pack - Wikipedia
I seriously considered training as a Home Condition Report Surveyor, I have suitable qualifications and experience including the City and Guilds Construction Technicians and could have been accepted for training, with hindsight it is a probably good thing I did not because I would have spent a lot money and time, including residential training weekends at a University to get the qualification, when the whole thing was very short lived and soon cancelled by the government.
I do still however have a copy of the Royal Institute Of Chartered Surveyors Home Inspectors Book which set out the requirements https://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-Inspectors-Handbook-P-Parnham/dp/1842192035/ref=sr_1_1
The whole scheme was set up with standardised reporting, the whole basis of it being utter regardless who did the report it would always say exactly the same thing and the outcome would be the same. It was intended that there would be absolutely no way of determining who had written the report just by reading particular phrases or descriptions. All surveyors had to do the same training course regardless of if the were a new entrant or an existing chartered surveyor.
But more importantly everything would be coded the same as the expectations were set out and every surveyor trained to do prepare the reports in the same way and used standardised reports.
Had the legislation for the Landlords EICRs followed the same model the scheme would have looked something like this:
NAPIT has actually done a very good job in many respects, with the aid of many well respected contributors, including some I have met and spoken to face to face, they produced the NAPIT Codebreakers giving fairly clear guidance on coding, they then linked this to their online Desktop software so that observations are prepopulated including BS7671 references so that both the person writing the report and the person receiving it can check the relevance of the code and its accuracy.
NAPIT also has a technical helpline allowing someone completing a report to actually talk it through with someone else to justify what is being said in the report, which I had to do several times.
The last EICR I did for the one letting agent was a third floor flat with two consumer unit, peak and off-peak, that have no RCD protection at all, despite having an electric shower in addition to all the other things that now require 30 mA RCD protection.
I was told although it felt completely wrong the right thing to do was pass the flat electrical installation as safe to use and simply list all the recommendations for improvement, despite the fact that if one of my children had been going to rent that flat I would have told them not to. I do not believe that is in the spirit or the intent of the legislation that referenced the current edition of the Electrical Regulations at the time of the introduction of the legislation the 18th Edition, not the 14th, 15th, 16th or 17th editions or maybe an even earlier edition.
The Government has allowed any Tom. Dick or Harriet to carry out the Landlords Safety inspections and produce worthless EICRs and now to is being implied it is the fault of NAPIT and the NICEIC who were never given a mandate to supervise, the blame lies firmly with the Government, though the IET could have been far more proactive as RICS were back in the early 2000's.
To quote Benjamin Franklin "Failing to plan is planning to fail", now the whole thing needs to be done all over again in a couple of years time, so there is a couple of years to sort the mess out, by then I will be well past retiring age but probably still working, however I will be picking and choosing the work I do very carefully and having walked away from doing landlords EICRs last year, I cannot say I will be likely to do many when they are due next time.
Having said that I am still being asked to do EICRs for flats and houses that are currently being rented out illegally.
Energy Performance Certificates
Find an energy certificate - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
All the surveyors have had the same training and qualification, they also use the same criterion, the standardised report forms are completed, filed and accessible online.
Because I am a working electrician I am out and about working with trades people and surveyors from many disciplines.
Whilst I have been doing electrical work and inspections I have worked alongside Chartered Surveyors, valuers, EPC assessors, inventory clerks and others undertaking undertaking surveys in many homes, so I know how they do things.
I have also actually been working in homes whilst another electrician is there undertaking work and even preparing EICRs, generally electricians have not been adequately trained to prepare EICRs, there is a massive skills gap and the way the reports are presented is often a disgrace.
I am doing certificates and have pulled up the observation sheet for the EICR that I said about above, eighteen C3 observations eleven of which would be resolved by replacing the consumer units, but the landlord doesn't want to pay for unnecessary work by updating an old electrical installation, such as providing RCD protection for his tenants electric shower.
Is that in spirit and intent of the legislation?
After fourteen years and four copies of the Wiring Regulations, red, green, yellow, blue and brown along with another three C&G Wiring Regulations courses and exams, how come this is deemed acceptable when the legislation specifically refers to the 18th Edition?
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