Part-P Inspection - How does it work?

[Andy Hall]

3) Liking to put down the abilities of others and assuming a least common denominator of what they want to do.

[John Rumm]

Or the alternative, "Never try to to teach a pig to sing, it will only upset the pig and frustrate you"

[John]

SNIP

I don't even dare do that Ed - if its a landlords and a "new" one on my books I use a fine tooth comb. Only if its one of my previous jobs can I hope to not have additional work in rectifying things.

[Peter Parry]

Under Part P a skilled and experienced professional industrial electrician cannot move a light fitting in his kitchen. A commercial electrician working every day on shop and office installations cannot put an extra ring main in his house.

A college lecturer with many years of both industrial and commercial electrical experience cannot now move a socket in his kitchen. However, one of his first year part time students, employed by an NICEIC company, who has neither experience nor knowledge is perfectly entitled to do the work and self certify it as competently done.

How exactly does this raise standards?

[Tony Bryer]

As in not good enough or as in potentially dangerous?

[Ed Sirett]

I think we are saying the same thing. I should add that the next sentence is "Quite a few things may take a lot to put right."

[Ed Sirett]

There is a spectrum of faults which are bundled into "Immediately Dangerous" which implies a fail for that appliance or even the entire installation. "At Risk" and "Not to current standards" are less serious but most landlords would want to see these items fixed because a) If anything goes wrong it's down to them - and there would be severe penalties involved. b) An observant tenant might reasonably complain about the items on the 'ticket' and cause trouble.

I generally don't do work for the 'Rachmans' but if I had trouble then I would probably only get a result by upping the seriousness to 'ID'.

[Ed Sirett]

I think you have just about summed up the entire problem. The net effect of this legislation will be the opposite of the original intention. I wonder just how big the 'under the counter' market for electrical work is going to be?

[Capitol]

Why? Has he been at somebody else's wife? Seems to be almost the only reason these days! Incompetence in government is now the norm for all parties.

Regards Capitol

[Capitol]

You jest? What are taxes? Think how effective mobile phone and asbo legislation has been!

Regards Capitol

[Capitol]

Or the householder saying, "Fred, will you please put some new points in my kitchen for cash?"

It ain't gonna work!!

Regards Capitol

[Bob Eager]

I didn't say it was effective. It was however part of the agenda. Look back in this group a few months...

[quisquiliae]

Do not teach pig to sing, it is useless and annoys pig.

[Ed Sirett]

Example: A while ago if you need a new number plate for your vehicle (say the old one got cracked and fell off). You went to a shop/garage and said make me a plate.

Now you need to go along with proof off identity, proof of address and the V5. Then you can have your number plate, after filling in various forms.

If you are the late Mr. R Cray you go along and say "Make me a couple of plates any number you choose." and will get the reply "Yes sir!"

The net effect of the above, Part P and all the rest of it is this. It makes the good guys do more paper work it has no effect whatever on the bad guys.

In a similar vein CORGI offer their members a simple and cheap way of notifying (and self-certifying) replacment heat producing appliances to the LA (Part J & L) . They will be carrying out random inspections (with the owners permission and an opportunity for the installer to be present) on a small sample of these jobs. Now that will keep the professionals honest for sure, but the cowboys won't appear on the radar!

[Hugo Nebula]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 11:56:16 +0100, a particular chimpanzee named "Doctor Evil" randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

It was expected that a lot more electricians would become members of the various trade bodies and certification schemes so that there would be not as much need for Building Control to become involved. The regulations and the self-certification scheme were also being written and re-written right up to the date of implementation; indeed, amendments to the guidance were issued on the first working day of the new year, the day after it came into force.

Councils have been told (off) by the ODPM that they are not allowed to vary the charge whether or not the work involves notifiable electrical work.

[Hugo Nebula]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:05:56 +0100, a particular chimpanzee named Andy Hall randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

That's more to do with NICEIC's rules than anything contained in the Approved Document.

To be fair, the legislation itself is reasonably clear and straightforward; all work should comply with BS7671, and there are a number of locations and types of installations where that work is 'notifiable'. It's the confusion surrounding the self-certification schemes and who is and isn't a 'competent person' that's causing most of the problems.

[Andy Hall]

What about the Approved Document paragraph 0.8 though?

*************** 0.8 It is not necessary to give prior notification of proposals to carry out electrical installation work to building control bodies in the following circumstances:

a. The proposed installation work is undertaken by a person2 who is a competent person registered with an electrical self-certification scheme authorised by the Secretary of State. In these cases the person is responsible for ensuring compliance with BS 7671: 2001 and all relevant Building Regulations. On completion of the work, the person ordering the work should receive a signed Building Regulations self-certification certificate, and the relevant building control body should receive a copy of the information on the certificate. The person ordering the work should also receive a duly completed Electrical Installation Certificate as or similar to the model in BS 76713 (see paragraphs 1.6 to 1.12). As required by BS 7671, the certificate must be made out and signed by the competent person or persons who carried out the design, construction, inspection and testing work. Copies of relevant BS 7671: 2001 model forms are shown in Appendix B.

****************

The pieces I note from this are:

"The proposed installation work is undertaken by a person who is a competent person registered with an electrical self-certification scheme.... "

"As required by BS7671, the certificate must be made out and signed by the competent person or persons who carried out the design, construction, inspection and testing work"

In other words, to meet the self certification criteria, *all* aspects of the work have to be done by a competent person or persons. It doesn't say that a non approved person can do one bit and a competent person can do another, unless I'm missing something.

... and passing the policing of self certification to commercially interested organisations....

[Andy Wade]

But does "person" here mean a 'proper person' (== a human being) or a 'legal person' (== a human being OR a body corporate)? If the latter you can have untrained vandals doing the actual work (supposedly) under the supervision of one competent proper person. The rest should need no further explanation...

[Andy Hall]

It's another case of incompetent drafting as far as I can see.

If you search through the Approved Document, the word "competent" is always associated with "person" as "competent person" apart from a couple of places at the end where "competent electrician" is used.

In this, the terms "competent person" and "competent person self certification scheme" have a very particular meaning i.e. competent person being defined as member of a competent person self certification scheme".

Normally in a legal document such as a contract, such a description is capitalised to avoid ambiguity.

In the Statutory Instruments relating to Part P and the Approved Document and follow on documents , they have used the term "competent person" and associated it with "competent person self-certification scheme. They haven't used "competent" in any other way.

They should probably have capitalised the words and said "Competent Person or Persons" or even "Competent Person or Competent Persons" to avoid ambiguity. However, there is nothing to suggest that anything else was meant.

Who knows whether either would stand up in a court of law.....

Perhaps it should be a requirement the government ministers be Competent Persons. However, I haven't met many who are.

[Nick Atty]

As I'm now past the deadline for prosecution I'll confess to having done just this. Just as with Part P and the general population, it never occured to me that I needed to *tell* anyone that I was taking out a nasty set of sliding patio doors that tended to fall off the runners and nearly kill people and replacing them with a set of opening ones that didn't. So I just did it.