The clear success of Part P

[unopened]

Preventing tax evasion at the (alleged) cost of more lives lost is not a lot different - I think it is just semantics, though.

I think an argument (valid or not) against Part P is that it encourages people to neglect their electrical safety as Part P makes the cost of complying higher than many people wish to pay.

If the government paid all the costs of an electrician testing domestic installations + the cost of any remedial works for faults found, and paid you =A3100 for being a good citizen every time you requested such services, it would be very popular indeed. It would also be very expensive for the government, and therefore, us.

Part P was brought in on the (possibly spurious) grounds of improving the electrical safety of fixed domestic installations. The fact that it had the (offically) completely unexpected side effect of reducing tax evasion is (officially) neither here nor there, but the Treasury are not unhappy.

Just be glad that the European Court decided that we couldn't by toboacco and alcoholic beverages online and by mail order from other EU countries at their duty rates today. If the decision had been otherwise, the government would have been looking at creative methods of filling a =A312 billion hole in the public finances.

Sid

[dennis]

8<

They already do that by taking money from road schemes to make rail safer. This saves about 4 deaths a year but would save about 500+ if spent on the roads.

Most of the stuff is OT AFAICS.

[Fred]

Possible but if it's difficult to extend your fixed wiring in your kitchen or lay an armoured cable to your shed, the alternative becomes trailing sockets or extension leads using Part P approved socket outlets from B&Q.

I would actually expect more deaths from "non-fixed" installations instead.

It is crass and sad that you can't easily fit an RCD to your own system.

Hey that's progress in a Nanny state.

[Andy Hall]

I couldn't possibly comment.....

[Andy Hall]

In reality there was not a lot of public support or objection in either direction. I made my submissions about it, as did a number of others here to the government department at the time as well as writing to my MP about it and discussing it with him.

A set of letters came back from the minister at the time (Raynsford) from which it was pretty clear that he was not at all well informed on the issues surrounding part P.

Overall, on the basis of the subject matter, it didn't get a lot of governmental attention. However, it is hard to pinpoint whether or not there was political influence behind the selective use of the information presented to the civil servants and others involved in the RIA. Certainly it wasn't well balanced at all, and it was very clear that there had been extensive lobbying by the various trade organisations who stood to gain financially as well as influentially.

Had it not been for the death of an MP's daughter as a result of a wiring issue that would not have been addressed by part P; there would have been little media attention either.

In the sense that this has been one of a series of measures where trade associations of various types have been invited to or have pushed for being the framework for self certification in respect to various construction industry; one can suspect that a motivation for Part P has been as a means of control and tax take; although no more than any of the other self certification schemes.

In the meantime, Mr Raynsford has become somewhat more disengaged politically, but is chairman of the Construction Industry Council and of the NHBC foundation, so continues to make his mark on the sector. Nevertheless he did find time to attend, with his wife, a performance of the Barber of Seville and dinner as guest of Arup Group earlier this year.

[Andy Hall]

Actually it isn't. In terms of whether somebody in Westminster sat down and specifically decided that introducing regulation around fixed electrical installation as a means of tax take, probably not.

From letters that I have had from the minister of the time, via my MP, it is pretty clear that the minister was not versed to any level of detail at all about what was going on.

However..... this is one of a series of measures for the construction industry whereby there is some form of self certification via members of various trade associations. Since there is registration of work done, in addition to membership of said trade organisations, it does form a vehicle by which a proportion of construction industry tradespeople are brought into a framework in which they can be tracked for tax and other purposes.

I am sure that the industry will always have the cowboys and the tax evaders; but in terms of the tax take, it will have certainly contributed to the exchequer. There is certainly a political motivation to do that.

[Andy Hall]

The two are not connected directly. Whether or not a contractor has to register for and charge VAT is determined on a mandatory level by a certain level of revenue in his business, or at levels below that, voluntarily.

[Andy Hall]

In respect of VAT, not necessarily.

I agree that someone operating outside the system would not want to register for VAT any more than join a trade association in order to self certify - either or both brings him into contact with officialdom.

However, if he purchased materials, he would have paid VAT then, just as now, and would pass that on to the end customer.

The difference would be that if his annual revenue is greater than the VAT threshold, he would now have to register for VAT (whereas before he might have ducked it). The effect to the customer would be the VAT on his labour.

OTOH, if he is below the threshold, it won't have made a difference.

[meow2222]

If I rewire my house I'll have to pay extra fees associated with part pee now. Thats clearly a tax on safety.

NT

[Fred]

Ironically for new builds there is no need for any self certification and any cowboy can do the work. Yes I know there is the CIS framework but that doesn't stop a jack of any trades to do the wiring.

Building control will be needed for a new build so the wiring can just be added to that at no extra cost.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not when you put it like that. You're paying to have your amateur workmanship checked by a professional.

[unopened]

On the scale of quality of result, there is an overlap between amateur and professional. At least some amateurs are capable of better quality than at least some professionals - there is no hard and fast dividing line. The problem is that all amateurs are regarded officially as incompetent, and all professionals competent, which is demonstrably not the case.

To give some analogous examples:

I am not a professional cook. I have sampled the output of professionally qualified cooks, and quality has varied wildly, from the nearly inedible to the sublime. The meals I produce are indubitably better than the worst I have sampled produced by professionals.

I am not a professional nurse. I have both experienced the care of professional nurses, and seen those close to me cared for by professional nurses. I have also seen non-professional nursing of the long-term ill. I would say the non-professional care I have seen was of higher quality - including ensuring the correct dosage of mediacation was supplied and taken; and taken at appropriate times.

I am not a professional driver. The standard of driving on the roads is such that I prefer not to be driven by professional minicab drivers, having feared for my life on several occaisions due the appaling quality of their driving. Bus drivers vary wildly from the excellent to the appalling, as do heavy goods vehicle drivers.

In the above cases the amateur often has a lower workload, and is not constrained by economic considerations, so can take the time and trouble to do a good job. Obviously, there are utterly incompetent amateurs for all of the above examples. Please note that I am not trying to equate the difficulty of performing as a professional electrician with any of the above jobs, merely illustrating the point.

The main thing that engaging a professional does is provide a means of comeback if a substandard job is performed. It certainly does not guarantee a minimum standard of performance, contrary to the claims of many people.

In other European countries, if you make a modification to your domestic fixed electrical installation, and your house burns down as a result, your insurance is invalid. If an electrician had made exactly the same modification, and the house burns down as a result, you claim against the electrician's insurance. Competence does not come in to it.

Competent amateurs are in a bind because they have no way of mitigating the risk of having done a substandard job.

Sid

[The Natural Philosopher]

>>>> The figures clearly demonstrate that the so-called 'Part P' legislation

NononNO. No one will be able to BUY an appliance with a 13A plug in it unless their ID cards show they have 5 science A levels.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You are joking surely?

Most "road safety" measures are their to incerease revenue and add to congestion, so they can justify a further 'congestion charge'

If, by raising x million by allowing y more

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Indeed. However, there's no need to 'catch' the competent amateur. There may be if he isn't. And the same applies to so called pros. That's the theory behind certification. Of course like many theories it doesn't quite do what it's meant to in practice.

[meow2222]

(At excessive rates.) This is a tax because there is no reason to do such work checks. Why? One might imagine there is need, but the death rates show there is not. The death stats really are that plain (bear in mind nearly all those quoted died from appliance faults, not fixed wiring faults).

Whether someone works for money or for themselvs and how competent someone is are 2 different things. I've lost count of the number of professional sparks I've asked simple questions, only to hear how little they really know.

There is of course also the question of why able and sometimes well qualified people would need their work to be checked by the variably capable and sometimes less qualified, esp in an area where death rate tends to zero, and the work done by jo public has been shown by these numbers to be not a safety problem in practice. Really its not justified.

Lastly there is the reality that people greatly improving the safety of their older installs will have significant costs added on for no real-world gain, and this will result in less people doing the work, thus greater dangers. You can couch it in terms that make it sound like a check to improve safety, but the disappointing reality is more people will die as a result of it, not less. Thus its nothing more than a tax with occasionally fatal results. Ie a tax on safety.

NT

[meow2222]

This is because public acceptance was manufactured by misrepresenting it as a safety policy. Had the truth been told people woud have shouted 'no way.'

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

Basically the same could be said of any Nu Laber policy.

[edgar]

8> NononNO. No one will be able to BUY an appliance with a 13A plug in it

8>

[Mike]

In my case, I'm about as qualified as you can be to re-wire a house etc. Most professionals haven't a clue why the rules are made out the way they are. Most of the committee sanctioning the rules are no longer allowed to put safety devices or add extra circuits to their houses.

If it was just about qualifications then I would agree with you, but it's not. It's about self interested associations receiving lots of money from their membership and certainly not safety.

Miraculously deaths associated with fixed wiring are very rare. Therefore the investment vs cost could be better put elsewhere.

The sad thing for me is this death of an MP's daughter: The principle published error is that the wiring was sunk into a bathroom wall was in a diagonal fashion. But in fact a number of things have gone wrong.

1 The old regs allowed metal channelling to be used which need not be earthed. Newer regs insist that metal channelling is earthed, the principle result is that PVC channelling is used. A masonry drill will stop at galvanised steel channelling whereas it will go straight through PVC. How many deaths were related to unearthed channelling. I'd put money on it being very few. 2 The person fitting the towel rail didn't check for power under the surface. In my eyes he's the main culprit for drilling into a wall where he hadn't got a clue what was underneath the plaster. Bit like doing 70 in thick fog. 3 A tingling sensation was felt on the rail but no one thought to question it! - Astounding - and in a bathroom! 4 If an RCD was fitted it might have saved her life.

Ironically I can't fit an RCD to my wiring because of Part P without paying exorbitant fees from either Building Control, or a professional cowboy.

You're not someone who would call that progress are you?