Hired electrician subcontracted work

[Jimfromull]

Good morning.

Quick question,

We hired a registered electrician to carry out an EICR, but after some searching it appears he subcontracted it out to a freelancer who isn't registered with any scheme?

To simplify, we hired from the parent business, who appear to have hired an electrician who doesn't appear on any scheme but was been contracted under said parent business, via what appears to be their own Ltd company, so basically a B2B deal to cover increasing demand by looks of it?

Is this legal? Would they be covered under the parents business scheme, insurance? I'm all very skeptical the testing we had done was safe or legitimately completed?

Many thanks

 

[timhoward]

Whose details and signature are on the certificate/paperwork?

 

[Jimfromull]

Whose details and signature are on the certificate/paperwork?

Inspectors who was the electrician who turned up at our property.

Oversigned by parent company electrican

 

[timhoward]

It's certainly not illegal. The electrical regs that we work to say who should be doing EICRs in terms of skill and competence, but the regs are not a statutory document.

There are plenty of excellent electricians who are not registered with a CPS scheme, which can be because they mainly do commercial or industrial work which doesn't require it. The only people who need to be in a scheme are those doing some types of domestic installation work.

Here's my take: You have a contract with a company to give you a ECIR.
That company has counter-signed the report which implies they have reviewed it and are happy with it.
It's on them to ensure they use competent personnel to perform it, and ensure that whoever doing it is adequately insured.

If you want a 2nd opinion on the report, remove all personal details that identify the company and inspector and post it up here. We can usually quickly tell if the person is competent or not just by looking at it.

 

[Rockingit]

Inspectors who was the electrician who turned up at our property.

Oversigned by parent company electrican

In which case it's legit. Whether or not it's a quality report is a different matter.

 

[Rockingit]

As an aside, there's no requirement for an electrical inspector to be a member of any organisation, just that they can prove competence either by qualification or experience.

 

[Jimfromull]

It's certainly not illegal. The electrical regs that we work to say who should be doing EICRs in terms of skill and competence, but the regs are not a statutory document.

There are plenty of excellent electricians who are not registered with a CPS scheme, which can be because they mainly do commercial or industrial work which doesn't require it. The only people who need to be in a scheme are those doing some types of domestic installation work.

Here's my take: You have a contract with a company to give you a ECIR.
That company has counter-signed the report which implies they have reviewed it and are happy with it.
It's on them to ensure they use competent personnel to perform it, and ensure that whoever doing it is adequately insured.

If you want a 2nd opinion on the report, remove all personal details that identify the company and inspector and post it up here. We can usually quickly tell if the person is competent or not just by looking at it.

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I posted this in a different thread the other day which contains the EICR.

Can't say I'm completely satisfied with it.

As someone who used to do mechanical installation/inspection reports, and I appreciate it's a different engineering discipline, seems a bit lacking. Especially since I only saw the inspector open one light switch and three light pen' during the visual, I'd have questioned why it only took 1 hour to complete a four bedroom house also.

 

[westward10]

This isn't at all unusual. Companies often use subbies and as such are just essentially paying for their services resulting in little or no overheads that the directly employed staff do. Subbies may well be better than the directly employed staff but in your instance that doesn't seem to be the case, one hour is nowhere near enough time to carry out the task correctly. It is no excuse but I suspect the rate they were paid did not equate to doing a thorough job.