for drawing attention to this, it has been expected for a
while. I notice the link at the bottom of the page to the DTLR web site doesn't work.
Something that draws my attention:
"4. Each year an average of 30 people die and about 1150 are seriously injured in accidents involving defective fixed electrical installations in the home, including fires caused by such installations."
How many lives might be saved by spending an equivalent amount of money on things like smoking or car vehicle accidents?
Besides which, I reckon that probably 90%+ of the fatalities occur from work carried out by the DIYer rather than the tradesman, and I don't somehow see Joe Public taking the slightest bit of notice.
Andrew
Do you need a handyman service? Check out our web site at
I wonder if B&Q will give the certificates away for free with new kitchens and bathrooms or if they'll stick true to form and sell you one on request ? :-))
If I understand the proposals correctly the problem for DIYers is that it means you will have to produce a certificate or something (like the FENSA cert. for replacement windows) when you sell your house and, if you don't, lay yourself open to compensation claims after the event.
So all that would happen with this additional piece of pointless regulation is that people who want to wire themselves will continue to do so, and then one of two things will happen when it comes to sale time.
a) seller will get an electrical inspection done and be able to produce certificate at his cost whereas now the buyer pays.
b) people will apply for regularisation at the local authority. This costs typically 20% more than if a Building Notice had been requested in the first place. However, since there is no VAT on the regularisation fee, the difference in cost is minimal.
Both of these will be technically breaking the law, but my estimation is that it will be as widespread as speeding.
With any luck, the government will continue digging in the hole in which it finds itself and this won't make the statute books due to lack of priority.
I think you will find this is scheduled to enter statute next April. It has been rumoured for a while, the sparkies I did my C&G2381 course with earlier this year knew all about it.
What you have to realise is what is going on behind the scenes. These new regulations favour the big companies, who eventually will be the only ones able to furnish their sparkies with the necessary experience and certification requirements. The small one-man-band operators will be sacrificed because in true Labour style everyone really should be an employee of BigCo.
Being an employee of BigCo means that you are on PAYE. And being on PAYE means it is very easy for the Inland Revenue to get at your tax.
Plus of course Labour as a political party are deeply in debt. So there is probably some palm oiling going on behind the scenes here with BigCo's making donations. This is EXACTLY what is going on in the IT industry with some of the big players starving out the little guys.
Example: An IT company such as EDS (they write the Inland Revenue IT systems which never work - e.g. child tax credit) charge out a warm body at a cost of about £1,000 per day. They pay the warm body £200 per day, pocketing £800 per day in profit - which is taken offshore.
If the warm body were an IT contractor (as I was) then exactly the same person who subcontracted to EDS (e.g.) would charge the same client directly (without the EDS middle man) in the region of £300 per day - without offshoring. Much more profitable using the little guy who doesn't have all the overheads of BigCo.
At the end of the day these sorts of stupid policies hurt the chancellor in ways he can't imagine. My income level used to be a guaranteed 60K per year (that's £300 per day, 200 days worked per year), which the chancellor gained lucrative amounts of tax on (up until last year I paid in tax what I will now receive as total renumeration). With the handyman business I'm likely to be earning more like 20K per year - because that's what I need to survive on, and if necessary I'll stay at home 2 days a week to make sure I don't pay the chancellor any more than he has to receive. Once I've got the loaves on the table to feed my family I couldn't give a toss about working any harder - it isn't worth it under Labour.
Meanwhile Labour have (a) opened the floodgates with respect to giving visas to IT migrants and (b) promoted the offshoring of work to India and elsewhere.
As a direct result of their own policies Labour are losing tax revenue hand over fist in the IT field, which is why Gordon is now finding inventive new ways of taxing the blue collar worker. Remember the good old days when Labour were going to get into power to tax the rich?
One other thing that may have slipped past the jobbing handymen. Gordon Brown extended the reach of IR35 in this years budget to include nannies, butlers and others who are employed by other members of the public. That means that 95% of all income coming into your company from a client is supposed to be treated as personal salary, regardless of whether you decide to pay that to yourself or not:
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weren't any blowing of trumpets with regard to this change, but from next April you can expect any Inland Revenue inspector to get a gleeful look in his eye should he inspect your books (the tax isn't due until next April).
Someone mentioned on this thread about moving to France to do up an old farmhouse. Sounds like a jolly good idea to me!
Andrew
Do you need a handyman service? Check out our web site at
All this sounds bad but in practice won't alter anything.
The crunch for me would come if small works certificates for domestic stuff are needed and/or professional work could only be done by registered people. In which case I'll be a couple of grand down (test equipment, exams , subscriptions) untilI've recouped the cost on the bills .
Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter. The FAQ for uk.diy is at
If I wanted to be really paranoid, I would wonder whether the proposed colour changes for fixed wiring cores (from red/black to brown/blue etc), were perhaps intended to coincide with the proposed regulations which will make DIY wiring difficult/illegal. This way it will be difficult to claim that that new ring main spur has been in place for at least five years "long before the new regulations came in guv!".
Perhaps we should all be laying in stocks of T&E in the current colours?
I always wonder what qualifications will be required for certificating installations. I don't have any specific 'trade' type qualifications but I am a C.Eng. and Eur.Ing. (with my original degree in Electrical Engineering). It probably turns out that I'm allowed to set and examine the 'trade' qualifications but I'm not allowed to do it.
as a result of a restricted supply (as if it's easy to get decent sparks at the moment!) due to barriers to entry and higher operating costs.
This will make it less likely that electrical maintenance work will actually be done, and that DIY work that is allowed will probably stray into the bounds of less safe practise as a result of the regulations (e.g. simply extending a ring from an old fused CU rather than a nice new ring on a new split CU). I suspect that the situation will actually worsen as a result of this.
Of course, if you're sat in your Islington house, a government residence, or a rented London flat whilst you're creating these rules and regs, none of this cost stuff has any relevance to you at all, and you'd never dream of lifting a screwdriver and doing it yourself. Talk about detatched from reality - this lot make the Tories seem down to earth...
As for the poster that suspected that 90% of the accidents that did happen were due to DIY work on FIXED electrical installations - I'd defy you to produce any evidence to back that up. Even the cost/benefit in the proposal was very vague in this area - neatly ignoring that glaring question completely. Ban non-licensed use of ladders - that'll save some lives.
Time for more action methinks. Emailing MP and opposition members today......
We could probably save £93m over ten years by abolishing the "Office of the Deputy Prime Minister", whatever the f that is. To think we used to consider the admittedly barking Mrs T to be hectoring and nannyish. She was an amateur compared with the bunch in power now.
Trade qualifications in the form of C&G exams have existed for ages. However, this isn't about improving the quality of electrical installations, so they aren't in the picture. It's about the trade bodies boosting their membership, so that's the 'qualification' required.
I just can't stand the places and I think they should invest in some people that know what the job is like from the inside. They're actually getting just as bad as my local wholesalers. :-))
I was pondering that very topic earlier today, as I've got a few reels of the old colour knocking around (seems to me I used to buy a new reel each time I went in a shed.....).
Andrew
Do you need a handyman service? Check out our web site at
No "decent spark" would leave an installation without testing it to the required standard anyway. The legislation for this already exists. Guidance note 3 to BS 7671. The work you describe would require a full electrical inspestion certificate which would only be valid if a "schedule of test results" along with a "schedule of inspections" were to be appended to it.
The written part of this exam is "closed book" with a nationwide practical exam to complete if you are succesful in the written part. The written part really is written this time as distinct from BS 7671 which is "open book" and multiple choice.
Of course if the electrical work is a part of other work coming within the scope of building control (eg extension or loft conversion) this may be included (at a marginal cost) with the building control application and anyone can then do the work. It will then be the responsibility of building control to certify the work.
It will be interesting to see what they do. They are unlikely to have the necessary "in house" skills, so will presumably employ an electrician for the task. Will they have problems finding someone within the required timescales, at the rates they will be prepared to pay? Will the person employed be motivated to properly check the work - or will they just regard it as a burocratic form filling exercise to be completed as quickly as possible? It would be interesting to know what currently happens when someone deposits a building control notice for a controlled fuel burning appliance.
people, what will the impact be on the sheds/lighting shops etc.? Would they continue to sell light fittings, swiches, cable, trunking etc in the knowledge that they were being sold to people who couldn't use them? Or are we heading to a position where these things will only be available for purchase via an electrician?
Of course cable etc will be available from e.g., France - perhaps P&O will offer day trips to sheds in France from where you can smuggle in some cable. I can just hear the customs now "is that a flourescent light fitting I can see or are you just pleased to see me?"
Precisely. I can see the smart move becoming accumulating a number of DIY activities over a period of time, and submitting a building notice for them.
This of course, is not what the government intends. The series of legislation and the stated policy in a number of building areas is to steer people to using professionals from trade associations. The real motivation for that, one can theorise about.
If people were to start submitting building notices for these areas which have been "subcontracted" out of BC expertise on a wide scale, then it would cause considerable problems of expertise and funding and hopefully there would start to be complaints to central government (not that that would do anything).
Regarding availability of materials, do I think that electrical fittings would disappear from the shelves of B&Q? Not really, although they may scale it down a bit. At least it would mean that the intrusive "helpers" that they have who come and poke their noses into what you are buying would be redeployed.
If you think about it, B&Q still sells gas fittings, fires and windows.
In the studies relating to gas safety run by the HSE, limiting availability of materials to trade outlets and selling only to card carrying professionals was discussed. Very few "stakeholders" thought it was a good idea or even practical.
On this one, because it has been common practice forever for people to do their own electrical work, if legislation were to be introduced I think that it would, quite rightly, be largely ignored.
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