Presumably the meter fitter was under the impression that the original DP isolator belonged to the customer rather than the supplier? (perhaps being generous there). It does feel a bit unhelpful to have left the new available terminals just of of reach of the new tails.

   - Andy.

And I'm guessing that the other two phases have been left ready for the meter fitter to connect to the new 3P meter.... but he's just ignored them & only re-connected a single phase?

On second glance, it looks like the ends have now been taped up? So the whole reason for the upgrade to 3P has been overlooked.....

I'm not keen on the positioning of the new 4P isolator either - so outgoing cables will have to be run beyond the edges of the backboard.

   - Andy.

Naturally, the householder, who is an old friend, is not best pleased.

The only possible reason that I can see for positioning it so low is something to do with accessibility - rather like waist-high CUs. The top of the meter could so easily have been placed level with the switch-fuse.

Clearly with the isolator where it is, the 2nd and 3rd phase tails cannot reach. The electrician could easily have left longer tails, but as Andy says, they would then dangle with the other clothes line at the bottom of the board.

What alarms me is the SP isolator. If the 2nd and 3rd tails had been connected to the TP&N isolator, it would have been possible to isolate N (and one phase) from the 3-phase part.

I have warned my friend accordingly.

What's the problem?  The meter fitter has fitted the meter and provided a 3-phase isolator.  Then they re-connected the existing single phase installation to it.

There's a couple of random bits of brown wire going goodness only knows where.  I don't suppose the meter installer would want to connect them up in case something went "bang" and they got blamed.

The customer can now call out their eletrician to remove the redundant single phase isolator and reconfigure everything as three phase.

Simon, thank you for your comment. That is exactly what I wanted: a range of opinion. I cannot disagree with what you have said.

What the picture doesn't show is the height of it all. Perhaps the meter has to be at a certain level. There wasn't room where the other meter was by the looks of it so it was always going to be a bit clumsy trying to get tails to 3 phase board from the isolator. Ideally it could all be a bit higher so you could at least get tails out of isolator and keep them on the board.

Based on my experience administering MOCoPA assessments for a number of different MOP's, what the meter fitter has done here is exactly right.

They can't trust the taped markings on the tails and they have no way of proving the polarity without opening up the consumers equipment, which they're prohibited from doing, the only option left for them is to install an isolator and request that the customer gets their electrician to the isolator.

As for the height and tails flapping around in the wind? That's just shoddy work. In all of the processes I've read, I don't once recall reading anything about a minimum height, but they definitely should have secured those tails with more than a single clip.

what the meter fitter has done here is exactly right.

I would have thought it would have been better if they'd replaced the original DP isolator with the 4P one in the same position - there would then bean obvious single point of isolation and the customer's electrician would have been able to connect in the extra two tails as was obviously intended without having to extend/replace them.

What's been done may well tick the boxes on a management checklist, but seems to lack common sense, I'd say.

    - Andy.

I don't disagree that it's lacking common sense, but it's drummed into them to follow their process and never deviate from it. I've seen meter fitters that have received as little as 10 days training before being unleashed on the world, and they're well aware that their only defence under EaWR is to say they followed their company processes.