Fwom:Owain ( snipped-for-privacy@stirlingcity.coo.uk) "N. Thornton" wrote
| I thought you said it was the customers responsiobility to go get
>| paperwork, not the tricians, in which case there would be nothing
>| illegal about an electrician doing a job and leaving it upto the
>| customer to do the paperwork. Am I wrong?
>Not wrong; obtaining building control approval comes down to the
>householder. BUT if that is approval is not pre-arranged then the illegality
>would be committed by the electrician at the time of doing the work.
Ahhh, NT finally gets it, ty.
(This
>also means that only registered contractors could offer an
'emergency'
service.) Illegal work can be regularised afterwards, of course, but that
>might involve opening up finished works.
>| To a fair extent one can get past that with legal phrasing on the
>| quote paperwork, something along the lines of in some cases
>| you might need to register it or have it inspected by the LA.
>"Quote paperwork"...? For the jobbing electrician whose paperwork is a
>duplicate book written on the job, making out a 'quote' for changing a
>socket in a kitchen will add 5 minutes to the job. Eight jobs a day, that's
>an extra 40 minutes' work for no remuneration.
Yup, as is ever the way with paperwork, but its required more and more now. If its a way to operate legally post-part-p then it would be worth it, but I gather its not.
So does this mean all the domestic sparks that dont partake in the part p schemes now are working illegally? I suspect if govt starts prosecuting there would soon be a pretty big backlash.
"N. Thornton" wrote | So does this mean all the domestic sparks that dont partake in | the part p schemes now are working illegally? I suspect if govt | starts prosecuting there would soon be a pretty big backlash.
From whom? The trade organisations and consumer groups would be united in wanting to clamp down on 'cowboy' tradespeople, and many householders will also be glad of a way of identifying 'reputable' (hahahaha) tradespeople.
Even the articles I've seen in DIY and self-building magazines don't question the legislation (or even explain the exemptions and limitations of the regulations). But even the serious magazines seem to be becoming more 'lifestyle' with "here are some pictures of some pretty switches and sockets you can ask your electrician to install for you".
I've been following this thread with great interest, and I must admit that my feelings about this legislation are a mixture of rage and depression. I'm a pretty serious DIY-er and have done all my own wiring over many years, taking care to adhere to IEEE regs. As it happens I'm in the middle of a pretty major (kitchen, as it happens!) project at present. I have a number of questions/comments either relating to points made here or in other parts of the thread, so if it's OK I'll just list the ones at the front of my mind:
Politics. I'm a classical floating voter so I am NOT trying to grind any political axes here, but I did E-mail the Tories asking them what their attitude to Part P was. Wait a little while (it was over Christmas to be fair..) and I've got a slightly arse-covering reply that comes out strongly for making a bonfire of unnecessary regulations as soon as they get in, as follows: " Thank you for your email. I agree with you that this is a costly and meddlesome piece of regulation. It is on our list items for consideration for repeal/amendment in our first year in office. I will be announcing the likely contents of our first deregulation bill nearer the time of the election. Thank you for writing to us and confirming our view that regulation is now over the top and often damaging. Yours sincerely John Redwood"
I guess if anyone is ever to repeal this, it would be the Tories, but nothing is certain in this world, certainly not their winning the next election.....
A public stink? Who knows - it could go either way really. ISTRM a statistic quoted early on in this (?) thread that last year there were 2M 'paid' domestic electrical jobs done in the UK, and 1M DIY ones. (I may have got the definitions wrong here, but my impression was that all tradesmen & cowboy work was lumped into the 'paid' category.) What % of that 1M will be seriously pissed? - assuming that there are multiple jobs in there and so on - my guess would be 10-25%. How many upset people does it take to make a stink? - it really all depends on whether they have a voice and are articulate or not. The problem here is that we are all individuals and not represented by any official body with a voice.
The media might get hold of it, but given their generally trivial and brainless approach to this sort of domestic topic I don't hold out many hopes. There are two obvious and opposite lines of attack: i) Some poor old dear sitting freezing in her house because she can't get anyone to wire up her boiler because no-one will touch Part P in her locality. Would require some well informed and joined up research (!) I) The guy in court. If he had done an A1 job and a particularly diligent local council was prosecuting him on principle, then this could be good; but more likely it will be a guy who has done a bloody awful job, someone got a shock, the council prosecutes and everyone applauds and says how jolly good Part P is.
The rebel. I'd like to get a better understanding of the powers in play here, so here are a few questions:
i) What rights of access does yer local BCO have on private property? Are they the same as the police where - with suitable paperwork completed - they can insist on entry, or are they the same as - say - a planning department, who have to be on by the householder? (Of course, if they are invited on for another job, there is a risk the whole can of worms might open up, so a prospective rebel needs to do some seriously joined up thinking and very good work...) ii) Sale time and sellers packs. So I eventually sell this place and get all these surveys done, and the electrical one finds something (I'd be surprised, but you never know surveyors) that raises an issue. Do I have to fix this before I am allowed to sell - or do I just have to negotiate with my buyer saying 'OK, there's this item on the report, say £500 off for you getting an electrician to sort it out..'? iii) Means of detection. Unless I'm missing something the private householder (as opposed to the cowboy) has very little risk of being detected indeed. The only routes seem to be either by BCO visit (i above), by sale (bit late by then) or by getting it wrong and having an incident of some nature (fire/shock) which draws official attention (there is the insurance dimension here as well, but that's another story). Am I right?
I think thats the one which will come in, the insurance co will see another way of making money for nothing and insist on a yearly check of electrics, gas etc. Rather like MOT's. You can argue either way of course, but we will all end up paying for it.
Fwom:Owain ( snipped-for-privacy@stirlingcity.coo.uk) "N. Thornton" wrote
united in
tradespeople.
limitations of
I hope youre not right, but maybe you are. I've heard 3 sets of comments on it so far.
DIYers saying its taking the P
Politicians making P taking remarks about it
Most professionals vetoing it
And occasional unaware jo publics that say they dont like it but oh well, i suppose its inevitable, and probably a good thing really.
Who knows where it will go, enforced metrication of the local veg stalls was forced through despite its jokishness. Most people dont seem to think they have any political power.
John Redwood is very aware of Part P. He's my local MP and I have written to him about it on several occasions as well as discussing it with him personally a couple of times.
I suspect that most DIYers who want to do electrical work will continue to do so blissfully unaware or ignoring the legislation.
I would agree with you on point (iii). The additional one would be that if a building notice/application is submitted for something else then wiring may get swept into that.
However, if you are having something built that requires BCO involvement - even if it's only that it's more obvious to the casual passer by, then the electrical work can be included in it even if you do it yourself.
We do sometimes. Remember the original legislation on gas installations and pressurised CH systems prohibited you from DIYing it even on your own property and this had to be changed once court cases were threatened.
You should be ok since you started before the deadline... not that that makes the situation any better in general however.
I would guess there are not going to be that many people who are going to feel passionately enough about the issue directly. Perhaps over time when people realise it is yet another (government inflected) reason why it is so hard and expensive to find good trades people, then you may find some more fuss being made.
From a DIY perspective I anticipate that most DIYers will not have the faintest idea the legislation even exists, and hence carry on as before. Those that are aware of it I expect in most cases will ignore it. I get the impression that many people only have a faint idea about the whole concept of building control and BCOs etc anyway, let alone the legal requirements. Unless you have had building work done recently (or you read this newsgroup) then that is not perhaps that surprising.
I guess the general "problem" (from the POV of raising a stink) is that while part P is a general PITA, but it is not generally the sort of thing that is going to threaten many peoples livelihoods in such a way that cannot be circumvented (unlike some of the cloud 9 tax legislation that Gorden likes to bash small businesses with).
There is a "time of plenty" for the trades in general at the moment (and if two jabs gets his way and does manage to concrete over the whole of the south east, it seems likely to continue). I expect most sparkies will simply see complying with part P as another expense and hence a reduction in profits. (for those keeping out of the tax man's eye, a big reduction... hey do you think....). Hence many may simply resist it since it buys them nothing.
The more astute sparkies may be thinking of it as a potential money winner, given that they can cough up for registration etc, but then charge a price premium for their service. They could also start to pull other sparkies, who do not wish to register, into their business and use it as a way of growing the business.
The group that is much harder to call is the army of "other" trades that also do electrical work (i.e. gas fitters, kitchen fitters, network installers etc).
I think you are right... I have yet to see many reasonable explanations of the whole fiasco in any of the press. Much of the coverage is so far of the mark to be even unrecognisable at times.
The obvious danger is the press will look for the sensational "human angle", "the government should protect the ....", "oh they did, cowboy flouts the law etc". To get upset about the legislation itself, requires a good deal more analysis and understanding of its implications and how/why it came into being. You only need to look at the amount of time we have spent discussing it in this forum, to know that it not going to happen in a 20 second sound bite on the news.
I don't believe they have any statutery right of entry (unlike customs and excise, or ironically, your electricity supplier).
Given that the majority of BCOs do not seem to come from the electrical trades anyway, it seems unlikely they are going to be keen to get into too much detailed discussion on the subject. They may ask questions however and see where the householder leads them.
Guess it depends on the market. You may need to pay to have the various works that have been done without notification "regularised". If they are all to standard however they will not be instructing to to rip out the work etc.
(in fact that seems like the best way forward for most DIYers, do as many jobs as you want, when you want, over however many years. Then just pay the one fee at the end to have the proverbial building control holy water sprinkled on it when you sell the place. If anyone tell you that you are a naughty boy you can simply say "Part P? never heard of it gov").
(other options might be being "grassed up" by a busybody neighbour etc).
Even that appears to be circumventable with care. Heard the other day of a software contracting agency offering people registered through a Luxembourg office. Looked into it a bit more and it does currently appeat legit. One presumes GB is working on closing this hole whilst not arguing with TB.
Ah, that's a little encouraging then. Glad to know that he's picking this up from multiple sources, although there are just a few unknowns in the system before we would gwt to a point when the Tories are in a position to repeal this....
But I must admit that I'll take the trouble to look at their anti-red tape paper when it comes out, to see what they say about part P.
I wonder how many projects I can call one project?? 'Well, nice Mr BCO, it's all one seamless project called fix my house...' Sadly, ISTRM a time limit too. Pity. >
Yep, the prognosis for any sort of mass revolt is poor the the point of non-existent. Even if electricians become scarcer Joe Public won't associate it with part P, but with some less well defined 'Things arn't as good as when I was a youngster' malaise which isn't too helpful. Your analysis of the motivators acting on the different tradesmen groups is interesting, though. From other comment here I get the impression that it might be the last group (multiskill fitters etc) who might make slightly bigger waves, as they will be happy to blame part P for any attributable electrical woes experienced by Joe P.
Oh man, just starting to think about the 'human interest' angles the average journalist will dig up to make a story out of what would be a pretty technical issue makes me feel slightly sick. 'Shock horror scare, little Lucy's gerbil had to wear mittens because some useless tradesman said he couldn't wire up the elctric heater' (The alternative story is where same gerbil becomes gerbil fricasee through malfunction of badly wired electric heater by naughty cowboy etc etc)
That's what I thought - so we have a useful starting point here.
Absolutely. A useful optional extra in this approach is to lay in a stock of red/black TW&E now (Screwfix still have it) as although the dates don't quite co-incide by a year or so, I would have thought it would be one obvious way that work will be dated by BCO's in years to come. I know other fittings, clips and so on slowly change over the years, but a reasonably competent faker should be able to put some wiring in in (say) 5 yrs time that, after a few months of wear and tear, could look just like vintage
2004.
. The only routes seem to be either by BCO visit (i above),
Mmm, that would be a way to win friends and influence people, for sure. But such snurges do exist, so it would pay to bear this in mind and deploy the correct amount of surreptition. Easy for me as I'm on a farm with my nearest neighbour 1/2 mile away!
Speaking of which, I do wish there was a happy medium in all of this - like insistance on a good idiot proof RCD setup at the CU, which I would readily support - having a farm I'm very careful indeed in this respect. [Sigh] The problem is that there are clowns out there, who ought to have something biological done to them with theri screwdrivers. Take the farmer I bought off 10 years ago. He had connected up his outbuildings with under-rated buried cables, when he needed to join them he brought them above surface to a domestic junction box mounted on a dinky little wooden post (it was weatherproof, it had a slowly perishing Tesco carrier bag taped over it!!). The wiring in the house roof space was rubber so perished that the live conductor showed through in places, and he had gone mad with chocolate blocks as well. I reckon he should have been nominated for some sort of prize.
It is encouraging, but I think that one has to set it in context. There will undoubtedly be a long list with some rather more earth shattering and affecting issues than part P higher up the list.
I'm fighting a few other battles with government departments at the moment, so in one respect I can sympathise with politicians to a point in that they are broadsided with so much stuff it can be very diffult to set priorities.
On part P, it is very obvious that the industry interest groups waged a successful propaganda campaign with both the politicians and the civil servants. As individuals, it's quite hard to compete with that, when data is selected to suit the desired outcome.
Don't get your hopes up. I quoted an article from House Builder a month or two back that critically examined Tory planning policies. The conclusion was that if HB's think that getting PP is problematic now then they'd better be hoping that Labour gets back in as it would be much worse with the alternative.
Part P is nothing to do with socialism. If anything it's a throwback to the days of medieval guilds where only the selected few could practice any trade or profession and the members of same fiercely protected their monopoly. Go to Australia, which has a seriously right-wing government, and you can't do any electrical work unless qualified.
No chance. They would probably have wanted to introduce some of the unpopular things if they'd been in power, it's a lovely opportunity to quietly leave them in place without having to take the blame for introducing them.
Too true. How often in the last few years have you heard about the unparalleled wickedness of Gordon Brown's £5bn 'raid' on pension funds (for which there was some technical economic argument AIUI). Yet when Oliver Letwin is asked whether reversing this will be his first priority when it comes to tax cuts his response suggests that it's not even on his list.
I can certainly see that appealing to some of the traditional labour factions, but I would expect the part the finally "sold" government on the idea is the possibility it may drive some of the black economy into positions where it may be more easily monitored (and ultimately taxed).
As in: "Dear Sparkie, give us some dosh", "Sorry retired, have not worked in years", "Oh, that is interesting, because we just demanded a full member list from NICIEC, and you are listed as a fully paid up member for the year!"...
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