Part P conudrum.....

[Tim S]

All I could find was the broad scope of water conservation and ventilation respectively.

The first has nothing to do with safety under any warped way of looking at it. The second really is only safety related in the event of gas burning appliances that source air from indoors. Unless you delight in a house so airtight you could suffocate, in which case...

I think, that as stupid/evil as the government may be thought to be, most of this crap is directly resulting from falling in with the EU. Thatcher (as much as I didn't like her policies on the whole) would have at least told them to stuff it up their derrierres.

TB, President of the UK and former rotating President of the Solar System was too keen to be the man of Europe and caved in to all this pointless crap.

Part P is, IIRRC, traceable to a specific EU directive. Part L and G almost certainly. HiP too (they *want* that energy cert on every dwelling, the rest is a smokescreen).

The icing on the cake. None of the sole traders I have any contact with will ever employ anyone. The bloke over the road from me does a lot of small business accounts in the village, and he openly advises many of the one-man bands not to take on a mate as it's more trouble than it's worth in his opinion, with regard to costs and paperwork.

Absolutely agree. Too sensible though.

Tim

[John Rumm]

Certainly yes. It must also have been helped by large commercial organisations that had other agendas to further by encouraging the legislators to think in that direction. It probably plays straight into the closed shop sentimentalities of the DPM himself no doubt.

This alone would save far more lives that anything they have so far attempted to do, and cost a tiny fraction into the bargain.

One of the other dangers that arises from the creation of so much nonsensical, pointless, and unenforceable "bad law" of this type, is the danger of allowing the law to appear to be an ass in the eyes of the man in the street. It devalues the whole weight of the legal infrastructure as it becomes ever more difficult for normally law abiding people to go about the basic functions of everyday life without legally transgressing on a regular basis - either by ignorance, or by tiring of the futility of caring any more.

[Mike Harrison]

If that's the case it shows just how clueless the authorities are. How many cowboys take any notice of regulations... all they are doing is pushing the real cowboys further underground, and effectively making cowboys out of the smaller operators that do a perfectly good job.

[A Bloke]

This is very much the case for me. The only two reasons I DIY are that (1)I quite enjoy it, and (2)It is often the only way of totally ensuring that a given job is completed correctly and to the highest possible standards. It certainly doesn't save me any significant amounts of money once tools, test-equipment and my time have all been factored in.

I've always been fairly anal about checking which regulations and best practices to apply to any job I'm doing, and making damn-sure I comply with them. This Part P nonsense is the first time I've thought about short-cutting what I consider to be pointless bureaucratic bullshit, and of course the problem with that is it undermines the whole Building Control process: if I'm going to do the odd bit of electrical work without approval, then it suddenly becomes not such a big step to, say, alter a load-bearing structure like a chimney breast without approval (who's to know?, I'll probably get away with it, blah blah blah).

That is the problem with bringing stupid laws and regulations into force

- you turn reasonable, sensible people of good morals, into law-breakers.

[Ed Sirett]

Part P has done much to erode the rule of law.

[Tim S]

I predict a sharp drop in BNAs when that happens.

You work in an LA? Are you getting annoyed with all the new pointless (IMO) crap being passed down from the EU via the ODPM? Round my way the more skilled DIYers I talk to and the more houses I look at inhabited by the same, the more apparent it is that building regs are being viewed less as "an entirely sensible thing", eg Part A and the bits on fire, to "sodding beaurocracy". And we are not talking about Mick Pikey and Kev Chav types here either.

Tim

[Dave]

That reminds me of my trying to get hold of some British Standards for ladders.

I have a part time job at a local primary school and the health and safety rep asked me to check any ladders we hold, against the relevant HSE documentation.

It turns out that I can read the documents at my local library, but I can only print out 10 percent of its contents.

What use is that, for referencing in the future? If HSE is so vital, why is it not available fro free?

Oh! It looks like another stealth tax. Why didn't I think about that earlier :-(

Dave

[Dave]

What can one expect of the dunce that started this?

When I see the 'ODPM' I quake, as he is so incompetent.

If he had half a brain, if only :-)

Dave

[Tim S]

To be fair, Fatman John is not actually dreaming up most of this crap - it's more often than not in response to some directive from the EU.

I can find the directive behind Part P if you wish for some evidence.

Tim

[Tony Bryer]

In fairness to TPTB British Standards have always been expensive even with members 50% discount. What has changed in the last ten or so years is that all new government acts, circulars, Building Regulation ADs etc have been made available as free downloads - a stealth tax in reverse in fact. Prior to this a set of Building Regs ADs was about £80 IIRC.

Arguably HMG should finance BSI but I suspect that BSI would prefer not to be in receipt of government money and the control that would go with it.

[Dave]

At this point, I must add that I have driven from Preston to Portsmouth and back today, to bring the g children here, so sorry for any mental aberations.

Why should any office of an elected body have the ability to define a new law, without a vote by our elected MPs? In a democracy, this law should be decided by the elected body that we call a government.

[Andy Hall]

Was this as a result of the driving or the impact of the kids? :-)

In the extreme case, if every new measure had to be debated in Parliament in detail, the legislative programme would never be completed in the time available.

Of course if they didn't waste time on things that have no business having the amount of time spent on them such as fox hunting, and didn't seek to introduce so much new regulation in the first place it would help.

Therefore they have enabling legislation which allows a certain level of addition and change to go through with little or no parliamentary time.

While this was going through the consultations and RIA and eventually legislative stages, I like a number of people, wrote to the government department concerned, and to my MP. It was very obvious early on that this was being driven by the commercial interests of the trade organisations, with the ODPM being a willing player in anything that would increase regulation.

They didn't want to take heed of stats from RoSPA and others pointing out that accidents and deaths from fixed wiring are negligible, that it implemented the legislation was likely to have the opposite effect or be ignored.

I have a letter, in response to one to him from my MP, from the junior minister (Raynsford), restating almost verbatim, the party line from the government department. It was pretty clear that he didn't really know what the whole thing was about so I doubt had spect any time on it.

So the reality is that this stuff goes through under pressure of commercial and interest group lobbying and a bloated civil service.

Democracy doesn't enter into it.

The effect is that we move inexorably towards the modus operandi of the latin language countries where there is plenty of legislation, but which is mainly ignored unless something bad happens.

That's fine as long as we all understand that that's the rules of the game - sort of like traffic lights in Milan being an indication of policy more than anything else.

[James]

But Scotland is part of the EU - and seems to have a much more relaxed attitude to such matters.

James

[John Rumm]

They seem very fond of the so called "statutory instrument" these days. IIUC it was intended to be used only in a select few cases where there was a need to constantly revise legislation (or parts of it) - the finance act being a good example since it allowed the budget to become law automatically each year without need of extra parliamentary time. I suppose you could argue that building regs fall into this category. However these days it seems to be used all over the shop as a way to reduce the scrutiny of new law, or to enable the use of very poorly drafted legislation on the understanding that the courts can sort out the mess later at jo public's time and expense.

It is almost they are trying to create work for lawyers... oh hang on a mo

and then it is only used to apportion blame....

;-)

[Huge]

Except that the UK is notorious for "gold plating" EU legislation. I'd be prepared to bet that the existing law already met EU directives, and then some, but whenever a new EU directive lands on some beaurocrats desk in Whitehall, he rubs his hand with glee and makes up another 200 page law.

[Tim S]

But they have their own assembly so I assume they are not rolling over and dying to every directive in the way that Tony "The eurocrats love me, I'm their man, ps when I retire can I get something cushty in Brussels" Blair.

Whereas, for some reason, in the last few years, England has been ratifying like mad.

Tim

[Tim S]

I can believe that, though I cannot understand WHY. It's like being asked to shoot your own legs off and then using an RPG just to be sure of a good job.

Tim

[Huge]

It's what beaurocrats *do*. Their "product" is beaurocracy.

[Doctor Drivel]

Making laws is clueless? How odd. If someone ignores the laws and then is caught they are prosecuted. That is the ways all the laws work. Corgi has successful driven out the VAST majority of the cowboys for gas. Some are still there, but if they are caught they face the music. The same in Part P. It will drive the cowboys from the market, which is what is wanted.

And nearly out of business.

A small operator has to do it right and get the quals, that's all. How many small jack-of-all-trades can do proper tests? Er, er, er, none.

Part P in principle and most of the practice, is a good thing.

[Mike Harrison]

The cluelessness is in making laws in such a way that they don't achieve anything useful, discourage people doing things properly and will be widely ignored, bringing the more useful and sensible building regs into disrepute. I'm not disputing that there may be some need for regulation in this area, but the way it has been done shows a mixture of incompetence and collusion with vested financial interests that we've come to expect from this Govt.

..and pay the fees to the 'competent person cartel'. For many 'jack-of-all-trades' types it;s simply not worth it, evgen if they were doing an entirely good job previously.

How necessary are tests in the majority of competently installed typical domestic installations anyway..? How many incendents have occurred in the past as a result of hidden faults in otherwise correctly installed wiring that would heve been identified by tests ?