I am currently making software for eicrs. It will be available for anybody to use and only registered electricians can access the database for editing. The completed eicrs will be available to everbody but excluding customer details,  electrician details and circuit labels. I am thinking of some way to report bad eicrs but haven't given this too much thought at the moment as it would cost a lot of time to go through reported eicrs.

I've made it so existing electricians can create a report from another uploaded report too and will also include a way for existing reports( handwritten too) to be added but this may be at further cost of £5-£10 each 

I'll repost once I've finished, I'm around 90% there 

It might be counter productive to have a report quality check in the main path of the software, if all it does is encourage the badgers to learn a set of  'good' answers.
Assessing if the results are likely to be spoofed or not may be better as a separate optional step.

You'd probably need it to emulate the sort of review that happens when an eicr gets posted here, which is quite tricky, as there are a lot of 'if- but maybe not if else ' which are computationally hard.

How do you propose to check the registered electrician part ?

clearly not all electricians are equal.

And while it is not quite the same, I do have a flat that my wife and I rent out, bought when she was working nearer London, and the rental agent in  good faith offered the services of his £50 test merchants for the electrics. I declined, and in the interests of fairness got a good friend to mark my homework and raise the paperwork instead, but most landlords would not know any better.

However, the very real problem does exist that in most cases, there is no appetite for (nor really the danger level to justify) an inspection at a level of quality that will really do much good, given the cost and disruption needed to do it well.

Mike.

Just changing tack back to the matter of insurance and the like. Firstly, how many people have been refused a mortgage because of the presence of a BS3036 consumer unit in the property they propose to buy?

Secondly, how many people have been refused a home insurance claim because there was no RCD protection fitted to the property' installation?

I would suspect that both mortgage lenders and insurance companies wouldn't last long if they began to refuse either upon what are seen as 'technicalities'.

I would suspect that credit worthiness comes in at the top of the list and that any notion of a satisfactory EICR lies a long way down the column of satisfactory criteria for eligibility, that is if one is even mentioned at all.

Just changing tack back to the matter of insurance and the like. Firstly, how many people have been refused a mortgage because of the presence of a BS3036 consumer unit in the property they propose to buy?

Secondly, how many people have been refused a home insurance claim because there was no RCD protection fitted to the property' installation?

I would suspect that both mortgage lenders and insurance companies wouldn't last long if they began to refuse either upon what are seen as 'technicalities'.

I would suspect that credit worthiness comes in at the top of the list and that any notion of a satisfactory EICR lies a long way down the column of satisfactory criteria for eligibility, that is if one is even mentioned at all.

whjohnson said:

BS3036 consumer unit

Mortgages and insurance are not refused.

However if you were to make an insurance claims for lets say fire damage and the the report from the fire service states the fire started on or around the CU, I am sure the insurance company COULD use it as a reason to not pay out in full or reduce the amount they pay out.  The same is also true of car insurance. 

because of the presence of a BS3036 consumer unit

Why should that be any kind of issue? BS 7671 still deems them acceptable (e.g. 432.4, table 41.2(c)) for the majority of situations - so no reason they should even be mentioned on an EICR let alone result in an unsatisfactory.

   - Andy.

Oh I agree. The regulations are not retrospective, which was the point I was attempting to make, and therein lies the rats nest for endless arguments between lawyers, insurance companies et al. An installation which complied in all respects to say, the 15th ed will have been failed numerous times for no good reason other than ignorance of the requirements of the earlier editions.Hence my point about a claim being refused due to a lack of RCD protection. What grounds would a insurance company have for refusing to pay out for such a reason?

It's not a matter of the regs not being retrospective - the current regs still permit the use of BS 3036 fuses for most situations. Additional protection by RCD is to my mind a separate issue - really not any different from having an all-MCB CU. There's no reason why separate RCDs can't be used where necessary in conjunction with BS 3036 CUs - a separate 30mA RCCB before a CU was common practice, and where multiple CUs are used hardly any different in effect from split-CUs common today. Others have put RCCBs downstream of CUs on the circuits that need them. Such solutions may not be popular, aesthetically pleasing, convenient or economic, but that's not the same as saying they don't comply with BS 7671 or should be flagged up on an EICR.

   - Andy.

I understand all of that Andy, but you know how insurance companies work - any excuse not to pay out. I was just attempting to explore what grounds they may choose to use in the event of a claim refusal.

So in that case, should the homeowner be expected to rush out and buy a new consumer unit every time the wiring regulations change?

I would say that such a requirement would be wholly unreasonable.