just read this and thought i would share it. it's coming to us soon!
Why Was Part P Introduced?
Government ministers have been pressed on this issue time and again, and they hide behind the excuse that it is necessary to combat the loss of life and serious industry that is incurred through cowboy electrical work being carried out. On the face of it that is an excellent justification which we would all wish to support.
However, if you investigate this subject in more depth you discover (using official figures issued on the web site of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) that there are in the region of 40 electrical fatalities per year in the UK. And of those electrical fatalities and major incidents, a significant portion are appliance related - for example consumers who run over the electrical cable when cutting the grass with their mower, or badly fitted plugs on old equipment. Those fatalities will still occur regardless of Part P, it isn't a panacea to stop people acting dangerously when using electrical equipment.
Part P specifically excludes apparatus and appliances which are connected to the electrical supply. The legislation applies only to the electrical infrastructure of the premises - anything plugged into a wall socket doesn't count.
So in actual fact, using the governments own official figures, this legislation is specifically designed to save 4-6 lives per year. And that's all. Furthermore, if the fatalities were properly recorded (for example a fatality involving someone running over their electric lawnmower cable could be recorded as an electrical death and be one of the 4-6 lives) then it is quite possible that the number of actual fatalities each year which Part P is supposed to affect would approach zero.
Like everyone, I welcome the saving of even one life. But just consider for a moment how much money government have invested in getting Part P onto the statute book. The figure runs into many millions of pounds, and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that even one life will be saved - in fact after the introduction of Part P it is more than likely that more lives will be lost when homeowners discover that they can no longer afford to have the job done properly by employing a qualified tradesperson. That work will still need to be done, so the hapless have-a-go hero will be forced to try and fix the installation themselves - and keep quiet about it.
And won't that be nice if you move into a property where someone who doesn't know what they are doing has been carving up the electrical installation under the floorboards? That "cowboy" operator might well be the previous homeowner, who might not even have realised that he was breaking the law - he might have sought quotes for the work, found them too high (where they might not have been prior to Part P) and got on and done the job themselves oblivious to the fact that he was working outside the law, and even more importantly lashing together a solution designed to bring lives to a premature end.
My considered response to this legislation is that this money would have been much better spent on improving medical facilities, improving pensions provisions for all, and improving life for everyone. Using taxpayers money to penalise homeowners will not produce the desired results. The number of saveable lives from unsafe electrical works is preciously small, and regardless of Part P it is very likely that at least that number of lives will continue to be lost in the future.
What Does Part P Mean?
In plain English, part P means that work carried out in domestic premises may - depending upon its location and nature - be subject to new rules. In short, any electrical work which is undertaken in a kitchen, bathroom, or in the garden will need to be either undertaken by a certified (note: not simply qualified) electrician who is enabled by government to issue certificates on completion to satisfy these regulations. Or alternatively, once the work has been completed the local authority must be contacted so that they can send round their representative to issue the certificate. It is quite probable that because of the need to service this legislation local councils will have to employ more people, thus your council tax bills will go up in the future.
The homeowner will no longer be able to carry out much of their own electrical work.
What It Means In Practice
Once Part P comes into force the homeowner may be in for a nasty shock - and not of the electrical variety.
Assuming you can find a suitably certified electrical tradesperson it is exceedingly likely that the homeowner will be faced with a very inflated invoice. For example where a simple change of a light fitting might have incurred an invoice for £30, any such change requiring certification will most likely incur an invoice of £200 or more.
There are two possible motivations for that higher cost coming about. Firstly, in order to carry out all of the necessary checks to produce the certificate the electrician will have to invest time and effort, billable on a time and materials basis. Whereas before the electrician would have quickly carried out the safety checks for the installation the new scenario is that he will have to follow a dogmatic process of form-filling to meet Part P requirements. Your electrician will need new skills as an administrator filling in forms. It could easily be the case that the job you employ him for takes 5 minutes to resolve, followed by 2 hours of unproductive testing and form filling. Personally if I employ someone I have expectations that they will do a competent job to the best of their abilities without having government impose dogmatic processes where they have to prove time and again that they are using best practices.
Secondly, one of the main reasons why this legislation was introduced was to stamp out cowboy operators. And yet using part P as an excuse it is entirely possible that cowboy electricians will blossom and inflate their prices to increase their profits. Homeowners will most likely hear excuses like "Sorry mate, it's the regulations you see.....".
Another aspect of this legislation being introduced could well be that the cowboy cash-in-hand operators will cash in on the arrangement - "We'll do that job for cash mate!". There will be no audit trail left behind, no certificates, and if the electrical installation is left unsafe then the homeowner will be liable and unable to pursue the real culprit. Plus the chancellor of the exchequor will not see any tax paid on the cash-in-hand payments (you have discussed this with Mr Brown haven't you Mr Prescott?).
No-one Will Know About This So It Will Be Okay.....
You might think so, but come the time when you sell your house be aware that the buyers solicitor will send you a questionaire, on which will be questions asking if any electrical work has been carried out within the premises during your tenure - and if so please produce the required certification.
You would need to think very hard and carefully about answering that question honestly and truthfully, because if you try to hide the fact and it is discovered years afterwards (and/or a serious electrical incident occurs) then not only will the new homeowners be after you but most probably solicitors acting on behalf of large insurance companies who have carried the risk on the property in the intervening period. You could lose everything you own if such an approach was successful, and all because you answered no on a legally enforcable document thinking it would be okay to tell a small white lie.
And what about the situation where you employ an electrical contractor at high price, and get the certificate. Some years later you decide to move home and you lose the certificate in the intervening period. This isn't like an MOT ( BUT - A PIR IS) where you can obtain a certified copy for a small sum of money - because there are safety issues involved no-one is going to issue you a new certificate without fully testing the installation for compliance first. That's several hundred pounds you will need to find just because you wanted (or had) to move home. And in due course you can bet your bottom dollar that government will see fit to ensure that you provide valid certificates for your home as part of the sellers packs which are being brought into statute against all advice, whether or not you have had any electrical work carried out on the property being sold.
Clearly, no-one can ever be justified in creating an unsafe electrical installation and I would never support such activity. But thanks to Part P you will not be able to sign away your home to someone else and leave the problem behind for someone else to sort out - you will have to sort it out before you sell the house. And if you decide to blag it and not tell the truth then you risk your entire livelihood of you, your family, and any dependents you may have. A highly unlikely scenario but bear it in mind all the same.
And what about another possibly dire situation? You bought the house and then sold it later. Unknown to you the previous owner to you had introduced some bad wiring in the property. The owner after you gets electrocuted - and you get called into the dock to defend yourself because you signed a form to say there was no electrical work undertaken during your tenure. All very well that justice may come to your rescue (and it may not, there are cases where people have been wrongly convicted of an offence), but you could be in for some major disruption to your life whilst this is going on, and you will need to employ your own legal representative to defend you until you are proven innocent. Look forward to saying goodbye to hundreds if not thousands of pounds if this were to happen.
Surely The Tradesman Can Control His Prices?
Yes and no. But consider that in order to satisfy Part P the tradesman will need to do the following:
Undergo an inspection with an approving authority at a one-off cost of about £650.
Incur membership fees to the approving authority at a cost of about £350 a year.
Purchase certificates from the approving authority at a cost of £100 or more per year (previously suitable certificates which did not need to carry the certifying authorities emblem could be purchased from anywhere at much lower cost).
This is on top of test equipment costing over £1,000, and the annual calibration costs of £100 per year.
It is also a fact that the legislation favours big companies and penalises the small players. In order to satisfy the legislation the company only has to have one of its electricians certified, not all of them. And that electrician takes responsibility for signing off the certificates. The company only needs one set of test equipment too. Clearly in a one-man-band operation the only electrician in the company has to shoulder the cost, but in big mega-corporation employing 20 or more electricians the cost is distributed amongst all. This isn't fair by anyones standards.
Take another example. A semi-retired electrician who has served a lifetime in the domestic electrical maintenance industry and who does a few odd jobs for people in order to pick up some beer money. He doesn't earn anything like enough to pay for Part P certification and he's not trying to build an enterprise. Thanks to Part P you can say goodbye to that electrician helping you out with your little jobs, you can instead pay through the nose for another tradesman who has to obey the rules as set by government.
It should be little wonder to the homeowner that the tradesman is not a registered charity, and will need to pass on these inflated costs to the end user.
My Opinion
Nice try Mr Prescott, but no gobstopper. There were far better ways of spending taxpayers money than Part P. For example why not have required anyone who is carrying out electrical installation work to have minimum qualifications and experience before offering electrical services? Why not require the tradesman to implement BS7671 practices in all electrical work (BS7671 is only advisory and has been since the outset)? Why all this dogma about the tradesman having to belong to a government-inspired quango designed to drive consumer prices up?
As a side issue, I happen to have obtained my BS7671 certificate by going to college and sitting an examination early in 2003. I know for a fact that at the time I did my C&G2381 course many practicing electricians out there with years of experience did not have that certification. They will have to acquire C&G2381 under Part P, but why on earth tell tradespeople that they can't be trusted to carry out electrical work unless they belong to a quango recognised by government? This is enforced union membership by the back door, and ordinary members of the public (and tradesmen) can be left to wonder whether there might be backhanders being paid by the quango operatives and those who run larger electrical contracting firms who would be delighted to see the small operators squeezed out of business.
If I applied to be a taxi-driver it would be a reasonable expectation that I should hold a clean and valid driving license. If it applied to taxi-driving, Part P would force me to join a motoring organisation such as the AA or RAC (and in cost terms having to join such an organisation at least four times each year). And the AA/RAC would be empowered to carry out checks of my vehicle at least once per year - at my cost. I'm not going there Mr Prescott - the amount of electrical work I do in any one year is relatively small and wouldn't cover the onerous costs of belonging to your quango.
So in future I will be forced to turn away income that your chancellor would have received taxes from. It's no good pretending that the work will go to a larger more expensive outfit on which higher taxes will be paid, as already mentioned it's just as likely that the have-a-go homeowners will be encouraged to do the work themselves, the end result being that no paid work will be undertaken by anyone, representing a nett loss to the UK taxation system. And at the same time introducing the possibility of more fatalities because work will be done by people who do not understand what they are doing nor use safe working practices.
Please don't mis-read these comments. In essence I am fully supportive of any moves which make homes a safer place, and if we can do anything to get rid of the fly-by-night cowboy operators then that's something that will get my full support every time. But what I do not and cannot support is government red tape which has been invented on the back of the proverbial fag packet by bureaucrats who haven't the foggiest clue about what they are legislating for. Those bureaucrats are not asking questions about the material they are working with, and are believing they are doing the right thing to save lives - the opposite is true.
Joined up government strikes again!
hmmmm, interesting.
cheers
eggs
