Part P - dissent in the camp?

[cynic]

[terry]

solution looking for a problem! Eh?

[Tim Watts]

cynic wibbled on Tuesday 27 April 2010 19:26

came into force:

"... We emailed all of the Building Control offices on the list, leaving out Aberdeen as the arrangements are different in Scotland. We asked a simple question: ? Since Part P was introduced in 2005, have you ever prosecuted anyone for breaching it? If so, how many?? The result was unanimous- of those we asked, not a single prosecution has ever taken place for failing to notify under the Part P rules. There is no reason to suppose that these towns are untypical, so perhaps Part P is the only law in history which no-one has ever broken! ...... The Building Inspectors generally thought that Part P was useless, and for them an addtional burden which merely increased their work load to no great purpose. ..."

[source:

[Andrew Gabriel]

It was dressed up as a safety issue to get the legislation through, but it was never anything to do with safety. It was two things: a) Government trying to stamp out cash-in-hand jobs, and b) Several bodies (such as NICEIC) eyes lighting up like cash registers at the thought that electricians would now have to pay them, whereas it was optional (and not popular) beforehand.

Part P only makes sense if you understand this background.

Safety actually took a nose-dive, as I predicted it would in my response to the original consultation paper (although actually to a more significant degree than even I imagined it would).

DIY sort of got caught in the cross-fire, mainly because most home wiring other than initial installation is actually DIY, and has been for decades in the UK.

[John Rumm]

"ex-NICEIC Associate Assessor" has an axe to grind with NICEIC), much of it is pretty much as everyone has been saying for a long time.

There is the slight concern that one of the options he supports is for better policing of the system we have though! At least one of the advantages of the status quo is that so long as one is prepared to adopt a more European attitude to bad law, you can carry on and ignore it without fear of anything actually happening.

Alas it would take a rather grown up government to say "This is actually counter productive, we will repeal it, and there was never a sufficient problem there in the first place to make it worth introducing replacement legislation". So there only seem to be two chances of that happening - slim and fat!

[dom]

From my look-through the site, I couldn't find anything that *wasn't* personal axe-grinding.

I suspect there might be a very different side to the story from some of the people the author had contact with.

[John Rumm]

Well he did have a fair and reasonable point about the use of stats about accidents, and also the fact that many of these probably relate to appliance related incidents. Something we have discussed here in the past.

Quite possibly. The written presentation is quite slick (carefully describing himself in the third person all the time etc), but that is no indication of what the reality was like. Having said that, I find the fact that well in excess of 99% of inspections pass is surprising, having seen some of the work carried out by professional sparks out there.

It strikes me that there are conflicts of interest that naturally arise when you have a trade body that charges membership fees also supposedly policing standards with primary main sanction of excluding members.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:34:48 -0700 (PDT) someone who may be " [e-mail]" wrote this:-

That is true. However, that does not invalidate the arguments. I didn't find any of them which have not been discussed before, but I am pleased to see them assembled together.

His second "solution" of strictly enforcing this nonsense does not appeal to me. It would be far better for government to be grown-up enough to admit the whole thing is a big mistake and abolish it. The chances of them doing this, especially when they only seem to ask for advice from those with a vested interest, are slim.

[Mark Williams]

favours to the message, IMO.

It depends on your point of view. The movers and shakers at NICEIC et al. probably think that it's an excellent solution to the very real problem of how to trouser themselves some extra cash.

[george [dicegeorge]]

I followed the link and bought his book by paypal and it just arrived, home printed and published.

Looks goo9d, but there's no pictures!

[g]

Mark Williams wrote:

[ARWadsworth]

Failing an NICEIC inspection is quite difficult to do. The NICEIC member gives the NICEIC incector a list of jobs that he has done in the last 12 months (eg a pile of certificates) and then carefully selects the five jobs that are going to be inspected. Failing an inspection will not mean that you are thrown out of the club.

As the member is choosing which 5 jobs are to be inspected (someone has to ask the customer to stay in for the day!) it should not be too difficult to present the inspector with a five passable jobs. The only thing the inspector did not like on my last inspection was that I used a first fixed new build for one of the inspections and he called it an unfinished job. I was quite disappointed as I thought it showed a real job and not a plastered and painted show piece.

Adam

[Owain]

The NICEIC even sell books showing the faults encountered by their inspectors - presumably in the course of inspecting their members' work.

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

I really hope that is not the case but sadly I think it may well be. Makes *complete* mockery of the approval system.

Do the tabloids know? Is the "book of errors" publicly available? Do any of the other approved bodies have the inspector select the sites?

One would assume that the certificates have the address and contact information on them. Is the NICEIC so far behind the times that they don't have telephones?

[js.b1]

Not necessarily, they may be "electrical faults found by anyone"

I suspect a lot of faults stem from the 1970-1980s, a combination of cost cutting followed by the fitted-kitchen & extend-wiring boom with

1 man supervising labourers and just collecting cash, no electrical test equipment and a simple 1 line cash receipt. The labourers then worked on own as sparks doing the "odd job" thereafter or as kitchen fitters, plus some DIY crowd who could not even be bothered to get a book from the library. The 1970s cost cutting hit industrial electrical work severely, cable recycle around sites to shared neutrals to boot prints embedded in 6491X to get it into trunking rather than buying new.

Contrast with 1950-1960 which seem to be "well done although exceptions" because they were apprentice, spark, supervised. Sort of like their concrete, if not subject to war shortages the stuff appears to extend everywhere to unfathomable depth and strength.

[ARWadsworth]

The NICEIC inspector can choose to inspect any job they want to. All the customers details are on the certificate.

Some of the electricians I know have moved from the NICEIC as they believe that other Part P "good buddy firms" are easier to work with and cheaper as well.

I assume that the "book of errors" is in fact the very good "snags and solutions". A worthwhile read for anyone interested in working with electrics. It is not a photo book of errors and scary installations.

Adam

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "ARWadsworth" saying something like:

This site is good for a lot of stuff, but the duff section is sometimes scary.

joined years ago and seemed to have grandfathered in as a pro member during a re-organisation, which is rather useful.