I admire the breadth of your "local" patch. Personally I grumble going far "off-site" for a day ;-)  But joking aside, would you consider that you  really see it as necessary or  useful to have to remember and to abide by multiple sets of fractionally different  rules depending where you go, or is it just a pain ?

I'd like to think the quality of work done and general approach is set by the nature of the task, not  a specific approved body membership, or even  a mandated  set of regs of specific date, or worse still the whim of some political type in a  devolved govt or whoever ?

Mike.

 mapj1 

The last job I did before Christmas was in Swansea, if it had been on the English side of the border I would not do a Part P notification, but as it’s on the Welsh side I will.

Doing the Part P notification isn’t of any great consequence, it does add an additional level of accountability. But it is the reason I was asked to go, the firm needed someone who would turn up, do the job and the paperwork at short notice half way though the week before Christmas.

On the plus side it also meant I could pick up a crate of beer for Christmas from the brewery around the back of Raglan Castle on the way home and there wasn’t any Customs fees or tariffs to pay when I brought it back over the border.

The plus side wins it then sparkingchip - good call sir, i like to see someone who get these priorities right

@ebee 

it is still a novelty not having to pay a toll as an entrance fee to go into Wales across the Severn Bridges, the toll was only charged on the way in, so some trips I used to go in the back way down the M50 then come back across a Severn Bridge to save around fifteen quid.

There may not have been a Customs booth on the M4, but there was a toll booth taking what was effectively an fee for crossing the border.

It affected peoples choice of jobs and places of work as well as affecting decisions on where to live, as well as the cost of moving goods. It was wasn’t actually making the Kingdoms United, neither does having separate legislation and benefits to living on one side of a border or the other.

Wow - that is a looooooot of range to cover - almost no where in England and Wales does not benefit from your work........good going.

Do you burn through a van a year doing - what - 80 000 miles per year? The Van has to be a rather large overhead.........

Your hotel bill must be enormous too. And mostly domestic? I admire your ability to say yes to a job. 

tattyinengland 

Everything has to change,  firms agreeing to take work on then having to get someone to travel a long distance to get it completed is not going to work if trades people are going to have electric vans.

In addition to the limitations on journeys due to having to recharge several times,  there's also the restrictions on driving certain vehicles in some places due to emmisions. I have been driving the long way around to get to jobs in North Birmingham because of the low emmisions zone increasing population,  although it now seems I didn't need to as the whole scheme has descended into chaos and the fines issued have been cancelled as the council was overwhelmed and cannot manage the scheme. 

Every time an imaginary line is drawn creating some sort of border there's a set of rules and regulations introduced that generally create issues that may damage the economy and create unnecessary problems. 

Worse still you may end up with the problems that exist on the Pakistani Indian border where the British Government drew a line at partition in 1947 and people are still getting shot now, seventy six years later.

At this point you may have gathered I am not a fan of imaginary lines on maps splitting communities and dividing people. 

Sparkingchip said:

Everything has to change,  firms agreeing to take work on then having to get someone to travel a long distance to get it completed is not going to work if trades people are going to have electric vans.

It surprises me that you can make a profit with such long journeys, although you are fairly well placed near the centre of the country and the locations seem to be clustered along the motorway network.

I was once paid to drive to Cambridge to put a plug on a shower pump then plug it in.

I really didn’t think it would be as simple as that when I left home as the guy on site wasn’t engaging and replying to my messages asking what exactly needed to be done, I was expecting to have to lift carpets and floor boards to run a cable in and so on, but it was simply fit a plug although I tested and certified the socket I plugged it into was safe.

A full days pay plus mileage, but I didn’t charge for the plug as that seemed like it would be egging the pudding.

Some days have been a doddle, others are hard work. But going back to the original post, it’s only like living in Dublin and covering the whole of the Island of Ireland, which I’m sure electricians must be doing although without the motorways.

If you think my wittering's are bizarre consider reality, that is even more bizarre when you look back to the Covid Lockdown periods.

I had a phone call just as the lockdowns were about to come into force asking me to go to South Wales Valleys to install a new shower circuit for a job with a fitter from Yorkshire.

The firm had given the work to a local fitter who lives in South Wales, apparently he turned up at eight o'clock on the Monday morning along with two other guys and ripped the bathroom out as well as taking the stud wall down between the bathroom and separate toilet to make it one room, then around eleven o'clock they told the customer they were going to get some materials from a builders merchants and never returned to site or made contact with the firm or customer again. Not the first or last time this has or will happen, it actually happens quite often.

The guy from Yorkshire had already stopped work because work was being cancelled due to Covid, however he agreed to drive down on the Tuesday evening having managed to book a hotel room ready to start at eight on the Wednesday do do twelve hour days to get the job finished before going back home because the customers literally did not have a bathroom, then I went down on the Thursday and installed the new shower circuit, driving there and back without stopping, having a full tank of fuel and everything I needed in the van including food and drink. 

The job was all done and finished, then the following week the border was literally closed in the first lockdown and I wasn't even allowed to drive my van off my driveway at home and go to work.

Reality is far stranger than fiction,  

Covid: Policing lockdown 'challenging' because of public's 'fatigue' - BBC News 

Photo- Gwent Police and BBC

"If you think my wittering's are bizarre consider reality" 

No not at all Sparkingchip. Seems perfectly reasonable and totally believable to me.

Once you have been doing these jobs a little while the

"Well I never would have guessed anyone would do/say that" becomes " Oh yes it`s happened before".

Your grasp on rea life changes rapidly and forever.