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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Zoom, you cannot legislate nor regulate for stupid. The only answer would be to have each household under the care of a 'competent person' regardless of mental ability and experience. Do you really want 'The Electric Police' sitting next to you on your sofa for eternity?
Sometimes you just have to let Darwinism take its course however unpalatable.
This will never happen whilst the scams are permitted to continue to publish scary but out of date statistics whilst hiding the real data trends.
If we ever moved to a 'licenced electrician' model in the UK I would only join it if it were administered by a neutral Public Body.
The fee would be minimal, say £50/p/a and the requirement would be to hold a 2391 and whatever the current C&G Wiring regs course number is. Public Liability insurance would be made compulsory and you would be required to lodge a valid copy with your LA along with copies of your qualifications. It could really be made a simple and as cheap as this if there was a real will to sort the job out with minimal fuss and interference. No need for bogus continuous assessment by the scams and no £1000/p/a outlay.
I would also relax the requirements for test kit, especially for that other elephant in the room - annual calibration. I have never had a digital instrument go out of cal. I've had a few faults with them but they have always been accurate. This annual cal thing seems to be a pass or fail, rather than a fail, fix, then pass for an all-in-one fee. It is ripe for reform, and given that the values we are asked to measure - which are not really mission-critical - then perhaps it is time to question their future usefulness.
I take everything I read from Certsure, The Electrical Safety Council (now Electrical Safety First) with a very large dose of salt. They should confine their activities to a kind of 'Which?' magazine mode whereby they check and report on cheap and nasty chinese imports on ebay.
But the actual Statutory Instrument has no requirement that inspectors be members of a Scheme; merely that they are "a person competent to undertake the inspection and testing required under regulation 3(1) and any further investigative or remedial work in accordance with the electrical safety standards". And there is no requirement for the T&I itself to be done to BS 7671 or any other standard. Obviously, engaging someone who is a Scheme member is a good way for a landlord to demonstrate a good-faith effort to find such a competent person, but it's not mandatory.
I would rather have a safe modern electrical installation with sensitive working protection devices than risk the health or lives or my loved ones or others. And if I rented out a home I would want it as safe for the tenants as well. They are not lessers.
I remember fitting a new Current Operated Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker, albeit a 500mA sensitivity version, to my home electric shower circuit 50 years ago. If I considered it a wise move then when I had less knowledge than now, I certainly consider it a good investment now.
A good old school friend's son was playing with a mains water pump in the garden whilst we were all out walking. The electrical connections were dangerous. We returned and had the device disconnected immediately. The house at the time had NO R.C.D. protection at all. Just what could have happened if we had not returned home at that time? Would you really want Darwinism to take a life in this case?
Z.
Jaymack
Thank you for the link.
The information on the link is misleading to the public. The schemes do not register electricians, they register "Enterprise" who may employ anyone to send out to do the work.
I checked to see if a mate of mine, who is NICEIC registered , is listed as authorized to do EICRs and he is. He only has a 16th Edition qualification and has never had any inspection and testing qualifications. Members of the public selecting people from this web site are being mislead in to thinking they have selected an electrician competent and qualified to carry out PRS inspection and testing.
The legislation does not require a person carrying out PRS inspections to be registered with any organisation only to be qualified and competent.
Also as a professionally registered engineer who has an 18th edition qualification and an old 2391 proper qualification and have taught for many years the Wiring Regulations, inspection and testing and electrical design and previously have been assessed annually by the NICEIC for 15 years to carry out initial verification and periodic inspection and testing strongly object to the inference that only electricians can carry out I&T.
The Competent Person schemes are not competent person schemes.
The really essential competence to get your business on the list may be the ability to make periodic payments to the NICIEC or other chosen scheme. Looking round, the level of technical ineptitude required to then get the name taken off is quite significant, short of the most common one, acute constriction of the wallet.
There are equally a reasonable no. of folk who could wield the test gear and really do know what the results mean who are not on that list.
As we have said many times none of this says anything certain, good or bad, about the chap or chappess who rocks up on the doormat with a bag of tools at the ready.
It would perhaps be a step forward if that register listed the staff qualifications - much as my dentist has the senior bod with "BDS DGDP" , the others "BDS BSC" and the hygienist has a "DDH" all on a plaque by the front door and on the website so that we know who we are seeing and what they have studied. It may be unpopular though as that might be a bit embarrassing.
Mike.
My local take away Chinese shop has lots of meaningless certificates taped to the walls. The sticker by the door showing the hygiene rating after their periodic LA inspection at least has some validity if only on the day of inspection. Is that a competent person scheme?
Cooking the food is probably good, to get the stars you have to fill in paperwork and answer silly questions! "What temperature range is dangerous to store food in a fridge?", etc. Should the place need to be very clean is probably not on the list!
Apparently the first requirement for 30 mA RCD Supplementary Protection in a TN earthed installation was the provision of a 30 mA protected socket for outdoor use in 1981.
If that is true don’t you find it rather surprising that some people are still saying that such a socket is still not required forty one years later?
www.kentbuildingcontrol.co.uk/.../approved-document-p-2006.pdf
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