I'm going to write to my MP about this latest nonsense.
May I regurgitate some points from your excellent letter of 2002?
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I'm going for a simple 1 page rebuttal that could be summarised as "what problem are you trying to solve" and reminding him a general election is due next year (his seat suffered a 2.6% loss last time)
Does anyone still have a link to the question asked in the House (of Commons IIRC) that was documented in Hansard regarding the effect Part P had had on deaths in the UK/England&Wales ?
I've been through Hansard's search but I cannot get the search term quite right.
I thought they'd realised Part P was pointless with the last changes being primarily a backdown, but with a little face saving.
Last time, I put quite a lot of effort into digging out the stats for the document above, and lots of people reviewed it (including my local BCO, who completely agreed but weren't allowed to add their names to it). I also talked with one of the supply distribution companies, and with MK. One interesting thing at the time was that, excluding initial home wiring, the majority of home wiring is DIY, and wiring accessories over the years have been designed to be more and more safe particularly for non-professional use, and we have the safest in the world.
We were thanked for our detailed work and the list of backers was particularly important. However, it was completely ignored by ODM, and after Part P was brought in, it was recognised that the figures used in the justification were incorrect in the way we said they were.
Why does it matter? Our local ambulance service doesn't keep its ambulances in ambulance stations.. it moves them around so they are near to where they think they may be needed and to where they can avoid traffic problems.
The local fire service appears to have joined suit now as you frequently see an engine waiting on a supermarket car park or elsewhere.
The idea that fire stations are in the best place to deliver a good service is just plain wrong. The only people it benefits is the night shift who want to sleep.
Which is a bodge to ensure that they can meet targets now they've closed down so many ambulance stations. It's hardly ideal to have a paramedic sitting in a car on a garage forecourt, but only during the rush hour.
Ditto.
So move them to where they are needed, but for goodness' sake, don't remove them altogether.
London Fire Brigade spokesmen were on Radio London the other day claiming that since they closed some stations early this year, at least one life has already been lost due to their increased response time.
Thank you Andrew. I suspect this one will drop dead on its face, but if it doesn't and I didn't at least write a letter, then I would feel bad...
I "only" have to get a couple of doors on, upstairs re-plasterboarded (thermal elements), the back loo fixed in and some more wiring and I can get my completion certificate for this house. After that, I will quite possibly never talk to them again if this nonsense goes ahead!
The best location will vary by day, time, weather, local events, etc. and you want an ambulance station ideally located for each possibility?
So did they put the fire engines elsewhere or are the unions insisting they be based at a fire station and not going to a better location? I expect its the later.
No, I just want enough to give acceptable cover at all times. The system of parking a paramedic close to major road junctions started when they started closing ambulance stations to save money. Before they closed so many stations, ambulance crews could reach any location quickly enough, even in the rush hour.
I believe that when they close a station, the appliances are either put into long term storage or scrapped. Certainly, at some stations which have not been closed entirely, the number of appliances has been reduced. In London, it's purely a money saving scheme, with a suspicion that the savings are being used to fund yet more cycle lanes.
Like many of these things, legislation is introduced by vested interests paying to bring it about. MPs ain't interested in such legislation so simply vote as told.
In other words, the rights and wrongs of it don't matter. Not helped by the meja who are notorious for not wanting to understand anything vaguely this technical. They just want banner headlines.
I don't recall an Answer which gave figures (other than the infamous one which forecast a saving of 8+ deaths a year). In any event I expect the Committee and/or DCLG would just point your MP to the latest Answer. I think that was a WA last year which referred to the figures in the (new) Part P impact assessment. The Answer was crafted to look back to the mid
1990s and to pray in aid all sorts of other things because, as has been mentioned before, recently the trend turned up. That Answer is OR 8 Nov
2013 : Column 361W
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It points to the impact assessment at
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which has the figures for deaths on page 14. Para. 60 then has an heroic assessment of the effects of Part P (without showing the workings!) of 2.5 deaths avoided per year. The technique of farming out such work to estimable sounding researchers and then citing their result is of course now traditional. The civil servant's skill is in choosing the researcher and drafting the contract ;)
It'll be no comfort that ODPM also rarely paid any attention to evidence from elsewhere within government if it didn't fit the DPM's agenda.
Good luck. Like most MPs the Committee comes across as risk-averse (ie they don't want anyone to blame them if X gets electrocuted) and careless of compliance costs. It'll not be easy to shift them from that without a counter-factual - ideally someone who dies because of the costs imposed by Part P. But on a point of detail I choked over their comment that
"We found little or no evidence-back in 2011-12 or in 2013-that homeowners either carrying out their own DIY or using a small builder were facing, as the Government claimed, "building control fees of upwards of 240 to have simple electrical work, such as an additional plug socket in a kitchen, approved by a local authority"."
They bloody well didn't look very hard then. I'll be writing to them on that point alone.
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