Compared with other standards, BS 7671 is pretty cheap. That may be because it is sold in much greater quantities than yer average Standard, or perhaps the aim is to encourage compliance.

Previous editions can be found on eBay pretty cheaply.

I'd like to see British Standards much more freely available. At one time Hampshire CC libraries subscribed, but not for many years.

Laws must be freely available and clear so that people can see what they have to do to comply. I think that the same could be said of BS EN ISO standards. However, there is a difference between a manufacturer buying a copy of say, BS 1363 to ensure that their plugs comply on the one hand, and a consumer who wishes to check that the plugs that he has bought do indeed comply on the other hand.

So should the BSI be nationalised and funded by the tax-payer?

Hi Chris

I do think that all CC libraries should have access to the British Standards.  Let see if any senior BSI people enter the debate to educate me/us as to why this is wrong.  It does seem that sometimes things/information get hidden behind PayWalls. 

Sergio Fernandez said:

I do think that all CC libraries should have access to the British Standards. 

Agreed.

And I'm sure BSI would be very happy to sell them to them... In the end BSI is a business, and libraries have (very!) limited budget and need to decide what's going to add value to the majority of their customers. I'm not saying I agree with that position, but it is where we are. 

Sergio Fernandez said:

Let see if any senior BSI people enter the debate to educate me/us as to why this is wrong. 

I can't imagine anyone from BSI comes on here, but in any case I'm sure their answer would be that, as above, they are a business, anyone is free to buy their standards. They are (as I understand it) a non-profit business, but they still have to cover their costs. If they make standards freely available then this will reduce their income unless they push up the prices to those who do pay for them. (Again, rightly or wrongly.)

I would suggest that this would need government expenditure / intervention, and I can't see a case being made here is to why it is to the public benefit for standards to be freely available. I'm not saying there isn't a case, but it does need to be made clear. I'd suggest it needs to be shown that someone is at risk of loss or harm due to not having free access to standards. Remembering that if a member of the public does suffer loss or harm due to, e.g., a piece of equipment being falsely or incorrectly declared as compliant to a standard then it would be e.g. Trading Standards or HSE who would be pursuing this - who have access to both to the standards and to the expert opinion to interpret it. 

Which is a further point, any of us who are in the business of interpreting standards know that this is rarely straightforward, tbh I feel the cost of the standards pales into insignificance compared to the professional costs involved in understanding them - for the average member off the public they would need to employ an expert to assist anyway. Of course there are some of us in the middle, as I suspect many of us on this thread are, professionals using standards for non-chargeable work (in my case going into Savoy Place to read BS7671 for working on my own house wiring!). But I suspect the response would be that this isn't something for (that much overused term) "the taxpayer" to fund - it would be a benefit to us, not a reduction in public risk.

Yes, particularly as I am a bit of a standards nerd, I would love to have free access to standards, but I really struggle to come up with a convincing argument as to why I should have that access. But very happy if someone can! 

Thanks,

Andy

At one time Hampshire CC libraries subscribed,

I too recall a teenage me cycling to the local library in Shenfield in Essex  to view a copy of a standard that have been got there specially for me as an intra-library loan request from Chelmsford or somewhere - but that was in the 1970s. And I was probably a fairly odd teenager then to bother. (and maybe a fairly odd adult now to bother too but let's not go there right  now)
I suspect that there is no BSI discount for libraries however, and they will have looked at their catalogues and what it costs and decided that it is more important to stock stuff that is more commonly requested.

And you get a  lot more sheets of paper per pound spent for a typical book ;-) 

Governments do sometimes reach into their pockets for the national interest.

For some time now the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has offered free read-only (not print or cut and paste) access to all US standards called up in legislation 

It does not seem to have driven ANSI to bankruptcy, even though given how often one standard then calls up another, it means sometimes quite a lot of documents are involved when  though the regulations refer to just the first one in the tree.

Defence standards (and the US/NATO milspecs ) have been free for years, you just need the right clearances to download  some of them - the EMC standards are particularly good compared to commercial euronorms ;-)

Mike

In northern Ireland BS docs (British Standards) are available in all the local libraries for anyone a friend tells me.  They also inform me that the quality of electrical work in NI is high. 

Chris Pearson said:

So should the BSI be nationalised and funded by the tax-payer?

Full disclosure for the purpose of this debate: Personally, I think so, although I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple as that in practice, and a compromise of being able to access via the local library or even a significant subsidy would be a massive improvement.

Andy Millar said:

I would suggest that this would need government expenditure / intervention, and I can't see a case being made here is to why it is to the public benefit for standards to be freely available. I'm not saying there isn't a case, but it does need to be made clear.

While I would agree with arguments to the effect that there would be a public safety benefit, I think that this would be one of several reasons. Top of my head I would raise

1. That some laws, and more commonly ACOPs and the like, make reference to standards, and, as some have already said, these references may well go several standards "deep", making even a cursory investigation potentially expensive. For sure in many cases it would take a specialist to make a reasonable judgement and the answer may not be useful to a "layperson", but if one uses the same logic we would not have public access to legal databases
2. There is likely to be a "commercial" benefit to the nation by improving productivity / quality and by reducing wasted time and materials.
3. It would likewise facilitate both innovation and international competitiveness by reducing (nee removing) the cost of access to standards, particularly levelling the playing field for smaller businesses and start-ups

I might also be tempted to ask whether anyone can suggest how the current situation wherein standards are not freely available is in the public interest. After all, the standards themselves are produced by volunteers, are they not?

For scale, BSI's turnover was ~£670M last accounting year, not all of which will have come from sale of standards to the UK and some of which was profit, which using my nearest as a benchmark, is about 1.5 NHS general hospitals. Absolutely not saying this should be in competition (!) but while it's a lot of money I'd hazard not beyond the pale.

Chris Pearson said:

So should the BSI be nationalised and funded by the tax-payer?

Full disclosure for the purpose of this debate: Personally, I think so, although I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple as that in practice, and a compromise of being able to access via the local library or even a significant subsidy would be a massive improvement.

Andy Millar said:

I would suggest that this would need government expenditure / intervention, and I can't see a case being made here is to why it is to the public benefit for standards to be freely available. I'm not saying there isn't a case, but it does need to be made clear.

While I would agree with arguments to the effect that there would be a public safety benefit, I think that this would be one of several reasons. Top of my head I would raise

1. That some laws, and more commonly ACOPs and the like, make reference to standards, and, as some have already said, these references may well go several standards "deep", making even a cursory investigation potentially expensive. For sure in many cases it would take a specialist to make a reasonable judgement and the answer may not be useful to a "layperson", but if one uses the same logic we would not have public access to legal databases
2. There is likely to be a "commercial" benefit to the nation by improving productivity / quality and by reducing wasted time and materials.
3. It would likewise facilitate both innovation and international competitiveness by reducing (nee removing) the cost of access to standards, particularly levelling the playing field for smaller businesses and start-ups

I might also be tempted to ask whether anyone can suggest how the current situation wherein standards are not freely available is in the public interest. After all, the standards themselves are produced by volunteers, are they not?

For scale, BSI's turnover was ~£670M last accounting year, not all of which will have come from sale of standards to the UK and some of which was profit, which using my nearest as a benchmark, is about 1.5 NHS general hospitals. Absolutely not saying this should be in competition (!) but while it's a lot of money I'd hazard not beyond the pale.

I think that it would probably open a can on worms if the BSI was nationalied both politically and ethically.  However could the previous revision/edition be made public, I think yes.  Another alternative could be for the UK government to pay something towards BS creation thus the BSI could produce material/standards that are not influenced by the current government. 

There are so many cases where people have said that the BS (British Standard) information they require is behind a PayWall and it is sometimes unclear if they need that standard or not.  Once purchased they are very likely to see that the BS they have purchased makes reference to other BS doc which need to be purchased.  Take BS7671 it refers to many other BS documents.  Every UK electrician should carry an up to date/current copy of it or have a reference version on a davice.  There are people and companies with subscription that allow them to look at multiple BS without incurring extra cost.  As mentioned earlier by MapJ ANSI has Free Read Only access to all US Standard called up in legislation. 

Ponder this.....

Electrician has BS7671 as mandatory but what does your fire alarm engineer carry as mandatory?

Take BS7671 it refers to many other BS documents

We might be able to split that problem into two... BS 7671 tends to refer to other standards in two distinct ways - sometimes in the sense of to comply with BS 7671 on this point  you need to do what 'other BS' says, but often it's more in the sense of 'select equipment that complies with 'other BS' - in that case it's only the equipment manufacturer that really needs the other standard - the rest of us normally just need read the the manufacturer's data sheet to confirm it says "Complies with 'other BS'".

   - Andy.

Sergio Fernandez said:

I think that it would probably open a can on worms if the BSI was nationalied both politically and ethically.

I am conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I support freedom of information; but on the other, I am in favour of small government. I suppose that one can square the circle by the state (national or local) purchasing the right to view the Standards, which brings us back to public libraries.

Agreed. One might regard your ordinary domestic sparks as that equipment manufacturer.

Chris Pearson said:

ordinary domestic sparks

I would say they are a system designer as well when you consider Selection and Erection criteria.

A topic indeed worthy of a Friday debate, or any other day for that matter!

From my own business perspective, access to standards is often important but not critical. We specialise in relatively small projects in the hospitality industry, extension to a pub or hotel, conversion of a building to a restaurant or off-licence, that sort of thing.

My primary function is to ensure that the project is compliant across all aspects of building Regulations. On our plan submissions to Building Control, we must state that, for instance, the emergency lighting shall comply with BS5266-1 2016, even though it has been set out on the plan in full adherence of same. Not doing so for this or the fire alarm, fire safety notices, spread of flame, extinguisher systems, lift provisions, electrical installation, floor coverings…..you name it, would result in a rejection notice being issued. 
Now who is in receipt of all this high-brow material? Often a small local builder and his band of subbies none of whom would want to wade through any type of technical standards. They just need to be told what to do. That is the function of the plan and its attendant specification. 
So whilst I must quote the relevant standard on these documents, I do my very best to be cognisant of the person reading them on site rather than of the BC officer, who already has good technical grounding.

So in my world, which is generally around the bottom of the barrel, I doubt that free access to standards would have any major advantage. Good clear guidance is, however, a blessing for me, especially the range of free issue approved documents that address the Building Regulations!