The only truly dangerous thing ever done to one of my cars was done by a Ford dealership, who left a mole grip clamped to a brake line (wrong tool for the job). I noticed the lack of brakes immediately on driving away. They claimed to have test driven it. AFAIK there are no legal certification requirements for car mechanics (Ford only emply 18 year olds to plug the diagnistic computer in now, if it dont tell em exactly whats wrong they havent a clue)
The only truly dangerous thing ever done to my house electrics was done by a qualified NECEIC member who put the neutral for an RCD on the wrong Bus and mislabelled all the MCB's. Whats worse he then proceeded to test? the Installation and issue an EIC without owning anything more than a Socket tester and neon screwdriver. Did I bother reporting? no cos then I would get grief and more cost. Took me 10 mins to put right and 3 RCBO's to bring up to 17th
I however with no qualifications can quite happily service my Land Rover (10 years now) without a single MOT failure and that not only has included regular services and brakes, but suspension lifts, rewiring, Reversng cameras, brake lines, wading kits and custom armour bumpers etc. Land Rover are very good about making detailed service information available to owners
Also constantly amazed at the ignorance and lack of knowledge expressed on this site by a few "Qualified" folks and the examples posted on this site of work done by others. So I would say that there are just as many qualified folks wearing cowboy hats as non qualified
What this shows is that in the real world, it is almost impossible to legislate a regime that is safe and suits all people. What is clear is the current system isnt working.
What would work I think would be a system that says that anyone can do the actual wiring and it must be to regs. But they must not energise until signed off by a qualified inspector. This could be at 2 levels
1) Work done by competent person and fully self tested with written documentation. Low fee inspection. Basically visual with few key tests done. ie just signing off a proper sparcs work
2) Work done by non competent persons and not tested. Full Fee with full test and inspection.
Thus we would have 2 tiers of professionals, Fitters and examiners
This will be controversial but I personally beleive that in safety critical situations it is wrong to be allowed to certifiy ones own work. No other system in healthcare, mission critical IT, military etc would allow this. Just accasionally that second set of eyes spots something missed or forgotten
BUT to work, it must be publicised and there be strict penalties for non compliance. Currently 90% of the population think anyone can do anything with the leccy and sparks are only needed for big jobs. The easy availabilty of CU's and equipment that requires notification or certifying to fit demonstrates that the market for home electrics is big enough for large stores to cater for.
Maybe if Napit, NICEIC etc all made preresentation to parliment or even publicised the current regs to he public, that would cut down the amount of DIY and dodgy sparc work and mean more for the truly qualified and professional sparks