Is Part 'P' enforceable?

[Devonchris]

The real problem lies with Building Control. There are supposed to be alternatives to the competence schemes that allow qualified sparks to notify direct and pay an admin charge, say about £20 ?, some local authorities allow this but, in the main, most just tell you to join a scheme provider as that makes things easier for them.

 

[Simon47]

@telectrix personally I’m quite strongly against having to be a member of some trade to buy materials for a few reasons:

1) Where does it stop? Almost any trade could tell tales of doom. Would you let people work on their own cars?

I do most work on my motors, and in part that's so it's done properly I've plenty of tales of work done by supposedly professional (and not just "back street" garages) mechanics that just "isn't right"

3) The risk isn’t that great

Indeed it isn't. IMO the way the building regs (the notification rules) were done in 2005 actually increased the risks - by making so much work notifiable, and the rules so complicated, it left people getting by with problems rather than have them sorted. A classic example is having an extra socket added - which was not notifiable in 2005 anyway (except in bathrooms, kitchens etc). Anecdotally it seems plenty of sparkys jumped on the "everything electrical is notifiable" bandwagon, so instead of paying the extra it would now cost for an extra socket, people would make do with (eg) an extension lead under the carpet across a doorway. IMO the way NICEIC market themselves as "come to us if you want it done safely" doesn't help in that regard.

4) lots of people are perfectly competent but don’t hold the required certificate/membership. Industrial sparks etc.

Or simply people who don't do a lot of that sort of work. Get through 250 jobs in a year and £500/yr is just £2/job. Do (say) 5 jobs in a year and it's £100/job.
I have a vested interest here - I do some electrical work as a side business (all above board, notified to HMRC and with PI/PL insurance). It's been partly to fill in between jobs, partly to help friends/relatives out, party making sure the church got the electrics upgraded properly and with due regard for future needs/expansion. If I had to join a scheme to be able to do it then it just wouldn't be worthwhile even thinking about it.

5) The people who employ Dave from the pub will still employ Dave from the pub. ... and can’t afford a professional

See above about too-strict regulations having negative consequences. You either cause stuff that needs to be done to not get done on the grounds of cost, or you force it "underground" where asking for help if you are unsure is not an option.

6) DIYers won’t stop buying electrical gear, but they will loose access to good quality parts from reputable suppliers. Instead of fitting MK sockets from screwfix they will be fitting cheap chinese eBay specials that have little of no product testing.

Yes, yes, and thrice yes. Or the third way which is people cobble together stuff that's the source of some of those "someone really did THAT !" photos we see.

In my view the best way to improve electrical safety in the UK (which is already pretty good in my opinion) would be to teach kids at school a basic understanding. Safe isolation, basic workmanship, changing sockets etc as part of design technology type subjects. Instil an appreciation of the risks and give them some practical skills has to be better than trying to ban it.

That's a tricky one. I agree with you - but there is a risk that if not done right, you instil in people a false sense of competency. And you also need to remember that not many teachers have the knowledge to teach this properly. So it gets lumped onto the workload of "the design tech guy" who might know how to teach people to draw a bracket, but wouldn't know his fuse from an RCD.

 

[Rightpukkaspar]

No one yet has mentioned anything about 3rd party certification. If you join NAPIT or Stroma rather than the NIC, they allow you to certify people's completed DIY jobs. See section 3 of the 2013 Approved document. All the electrician does is an EICR and so long as they are registered, then this is all above board and the customer gets their building regs compliance certificate. Yes, officially!

Whether or not the installation was designed, installed, or verified is immaterial to the building authority, so long as a "registered" electrician checked it over when you finished and it looked okay.

This proves that we don't need Part P at all. In industry, some maintenance sparks do whatever they want without any inspection and testing. They might have an electrical contractor in every so often to do an EICR and they will pick up alterations since their last report, or just pretend that they the alterations had been there all along. But whether it's domestic, commercial or industrial, ultimately someone has a legal responsibility and liability if something goes wrong. Doing things by the book might help in this situation!

 

[Taylortwocities]

No one yet has mentioned anything about 3rd party certification. If you join NAPIT or Stroma rather than the NIC, they allow you to certify people's completed DIY jobs. See section 3 of the 2013 Approved document. All the electrician does is an EICR and so long as they are registered, then this is all above board and the customer gets their building regs compliance certificate. Yes, officially!

No no no. Total rubbish.
Just being a NAPIT member does not let you do this.
3rd Party notification is an ADDITION to the CPS membership.
The electrician does not just rock up and do an EICR.
The person doing the work must involve the 3rd party notifier from the start who will need to inspect all aspects of the design and Installation to confirm it meets BS7671.

 

[SparkySy]

I agree with @Taylortwocities as I looked at doing it but there is a lot of involvement from the outset and it would be easier to just pay the spark doing the design and sign off to do the install as the amount of site visits and documentation required he will be there most of the time anyway!

 

[Rightpukkaspar]

I see. This appeared to be a bit of a back door when I first saw it. I know that Stroma throw this extra in for free and charge a lot less a year than the others. Rereading their marketing info, it suggests that you can help a "peer" and similarly the approved document speaks of an "installer" who is not regeisted, so that would presumably be someone with a degree of competence.

I have had friends who do it yourself tell me confidently that they can just get an electrician to sign it off for them when they've done. I don't need to repeat the expressions of disappointment from earlier in this thread about what goes on thanks to B & Q etc.

Yes SparkySy, I've seen that argument before even on charitable customer advice sites, so it's good if work gets directed the right way.

The real problem lies with Building Control. There are supposed to be alternatives to the competence schemes that allow qualified sparks to notify direct and pay an admin charge, say about £20 ?, some local authorities allow this but, in the main, most just tell you to join a scheme provider as that makes things easier for them.

I wish my local building authority would do this. I asked and they said the only option was to join a competent person scheme, unless I wanted to pay them an similarly steep fee to come and sign off one new circuit on my behalf!

 

[Baddegg]

I’m with Stroma and although they do offer it you’ll need professional indemnity insurance (£250000) in order to do it, I still wouldn’t unless involved from the outset/design stage which wouldn’t be that different to having a couple of your own jobs on the go with you own employees installing,

 

[Midwest]

In industry, some maintenance sparks do whatever they want without any inspection and testing. They might have an electrical contractor in every so often to do an EICR and they will pick up alterations since their last report, or just pretend that they the alterations had been there all along.

Things might be changing there; I've worked in maintenance in a large development for the last year or so, employed with my electrical background, for a large national company. I've done some minor works, like replacing luminaires etc.

My line manager recently attended a head office meeting, where it was clearly spelled that no works would be carried out by maintenance staff, contractors would be used. They would have to have risk assessments, mission statements etc. If the employee does any such work, they are not insured to do so, and will take on the risk.

I've just asked a company to quote replace some faulty bulkhead fittings, something I would of previously done.

Interestingly, recently we've had some new electrical works done by contractors, with no certification or compliance certificates provided. We've had an automated door installed, where the contractor picked up the power supply from the emergency lighting.

In my previous self employment, the company that does all the electrical work I used to do, is rarely seen testing its work, and has only provided a few certificates when asked.

I think all electrical work across, domestic, commercial & industrial, needs some checks & balances. There is a lot of poor workmanship being carried out, and not just in domestic works.

 

[Simon47]

I wish my local building authority would do this. I asked and they said the only option was to join a competent person scheme, unless I wanted to pay them an similarly steep fee to come and sign off one new circuit on my behalf!

They aren't allowed to do that In theory, they aren't allowed to charge for testing/inspection either - but my LA gets round that by having two rates listed for minor electrical works, where the higher fee if you can't provide the testing results required just happens to be about £75 higher than the lower fee for if you can.
Ah, just looked and they've changed things again :

Re-wiring not covered in Competent Persons Scheme	£270.00
New circuits or consumer units	£180.00
Single socket/light point	£120.00

I'd be inclined to just put in a notice and provide them with an EIC. If they argue then turn it around on them and tell them to prove that you aren't competent to provide the details.
But now I see what mu local LA have done here, I'm tempted to ask the DCLG (or whatever they are called this week) under what lawful grounds the LA can penalise someone in this manner for not being a member of a commercial outfit. I've got a new MP this month, he's already going to be getting several requests from me !

Interestingly, recently we've had some new electrical works done by contractors, with no certification or compliance certificates provided. We've had an automated door installed, where the contractor picked up the power supply from the emergency lighting.

In my previous self employment, the company that does all the electrical work I used to do, is rarely seen testing its work, and has only provided a few certificates when asked.

So what you need to do is flag this up each and every time - inundate head office with reports of substandard electrical work which, to cover their backsides as the new system is intended to do, will mean them having to follow up on each and every report. After a while, they may start to realise that it's not as easy to CYA as they think. Also, the contractors will realise that they have to "do things right" and costs will go up - or you'll just find that no-one will want to come and work there.
Maybe it'll get to the point where head office will decide it's cheaper/easier to arrange the right insurance to allow in-house maintenance - perhaps with some form of outside oversight.

I think all electrical work across, domestic, commercial & industrial, needs some checks & balances. There is a lot of poor workmanship being carried out, and not just in domestic works.

Agreed. But the problem is, how do you deal with that without being a complete PITA to everyone - especially those who don't do enough relevant work to justify joining one of the scams ? It's demonstrably the case that the scam system isn't working - simply because the incentive isn't there for the scams to actually do what they are supposed to be doing.
Not to mention, if you make the rules too tight then you can create more of a problem than what you are trying to solve - I think that's what was behind the relaxation of the notification requirements in the 2013 amendments to the Building Regs. Anecdotally, plenty of charlatans were using "Part P" as an excuse to mislead customers into paying for work which they could still legally do themselves - or have done by someone not in a scam. So you risk creating a situation where instead of having a new socket fitted (too expensive), granny carries on using the extensions lead under the carpet across the doorway - and so on.

Mind you, IMO Gas Safe aren't much better. I've seen some downright rubbish (and dangerous) work done by supposedly qualified Gas Safe (and before them, Corgi) members. And gas Safe themselves are "not easy to deal with" if you have a complaint - as I've done twice now.
The later case was where a BG subbed "engineer" condemned my mother's boiler as "dangerous" and "not repairable" - I'm convinced he was trying to meet his "scare a granny" quota for new boiler installs. Gas Safe would not consider any complaint unless we left it as it was until they could be arsed to come and look at it - i.e. several weeks. As it was, a local outfit came and looked at it, was unable to see the fault described*, and after careful inspection & testing declared it safe for use - not something you'd do without thought when you know it's already been declared dangerous. Since mum didn't want to be without heating or hot water for weeks, nothing was done about it.
In a previous case (dangerous incorrectly fitted flue for a gas fire in my rental house) they couldn't do anything at all as the business that did the work was no longer a member (dunno about the individual who signed the certificate).

* He'd pointed my "not very technical" mum to some "crud" that I think was just some bits of dirt that had dropped down the flue and settled on an internal duct, and told my mum that a gasket had failed - and they aren't available any more. I found sets including that gasket for sale online ! The independent engineer could not find any fault with it. But on the paperwork, there was no description whatsoever.

 

[Midwest]

It’s a new way of doing things for us @Simon47. My colleagues, like most people, are pretty much unaware of Part P.

As regards bad workmanship, our development is now into the realms of latent defects. For example, the basement area is leeching in rainwater. Not just electrics, but building standards are poor.

 

[Simon47]

Hmm, reading it again, I may have misread the table of fees.
If work is done by a scam member then there are no BC fees to pay - it's done through the scam for a pittance. So perhaps it just means "total rewire £270, new circuit or CU replacement £180, additional socket or light* £120". That would make sense - scale of charges based on the amount of work being done.
*Not that many of those will be notifiable.

 

[Devonchris]

I wish my local building authority would do this. I asked and they said the only option was to join a competent person scheme, unless I wanted to pay them an similarly steep fee to come and sign off one new circuit on my behalf!

They should be allowing competent qualified electricians to notify their own work at a cost that reflects the admin required.

Part P was never meant to be a monopoly for the scheme providers. It just that some LBC officers can't be bothered to carry out their statutory duty in the way it was envisaged by the committee that set it up. See committee consultation paper below.

2012 consultation on changes to the Building Regulations in England 29.

29. We could also amend the Building (Local Authority Charges) Regulations 2010 to ensure that building control charges would be lower where qualified third party electricians took over responsibility for inspection and testing from the building control body and were able to issue a BS 7671 inspection and testing form. The lower charges would recognise the savings in building control time, and reflect the fact that the amendments to the Charges Regulations would require local authorities to take into account third party certification in setting their charges.

30. These lower building control charges would apply equally to qualified electricians capable of inspecting and testing their own notifiable electrical installation work (and of issuing a BS 7671 Electrical Installation Certificate), and who under the existing arrangements choose, for whatever reason, not to join a scheme.

 

[Simon47]

My colleagues, like most people, are pretty much unaware of Part P.

"Part P" is pretty much irrelevant - literally all it (effectively) says is that "electrical work must be safe". IIRC it does not even mention BS7671, that's only in the guidance document which is not the law. Pretty well everything that people mean when they say "Part P" is the notification requirements in the Building Regs.
The confusion is largely down to two things: That "Part P" was brought in at the same time as the changes to the building regs, and many people CBA to understand the basics

Since the notification requirements are now reduced to "Replace a CU", "Add a new circuit", "work within the zones of a bathroom" - then almost all routine maintenance is not notifiable. Arguably, commercial work is more heavily regulated in that EAW Regs, and other H&S regs mean that the business management need to have procedures in place to show that work is being done by people who are competent to do it.
In your case, manglement have clearly decided that the way to deal with it is to simply outsource compliance which should the brown stuff hit the fan they would find is not sufficient. Outsourcing to someone without having the measures in place to demonstrate that it's being done right does not get them off the hook.

BTW - method statements and risk assessments are usually (in this sort of situation) a complete waste of time. Where I used to work, if we were asked for them, then the sales manager would simply print out his standard vague waffle (which was cribbed from his previous employer) and hand them over. In practicel terms it was ABSOLUTELY nothing but a box ticking exercise. We didn't care, and the customers never read them - they just wanted to tick the box so they could feel comfortable at having (so they thought) covered their backsides.

I was at a job once and the manager in the office asked me about such things. My reply was that "if I fall off the ladder, I'm the one going to be in pain - as I don't like pain, I'll be careful not to fall off a ladder". He fully understood and replied "ah, the French approach".

 

[Midwest]

"Part P" is pretty much irrelevant - literally all it (effectively) says is that "electrical work must be safe". IIRC it does not even mention BS7671, that's only in the guidance document which is not the law. Pretty well everything that people mean when they say "Part P" is the notification requirements in the Building Regs.
The confusion is largely down to two things: That "Part P" was brought in at the same time as the changes to the building regs, and many people CBA to understand the basics

Since the notification requirements are now reduced to "Replace a CU", "Add a new circuit", "work within the zones of a bathroom" - then almost all routine maintenance is not notifiable. Arguably, commercial work is more heavily regulated in that EAW Regs, and other H&S regs mean that the business management need to have procedures in place to show that work is being done by people who are competent to do it.
In your case, manglement have clearly decided that the way to deal with it is to simply outsource compliance which should the brown stuff hit the fan they would find is not sufficient. Outsourcing to someone without having the measures in place to demonstrate that it's being done right does not get them off the hook.

BTW - method statements and risk assessments are usually (in this sort of situation) a complete waste of time. Where I used to work, if we were asked for them, then the sales manager would simply print out his standard vague waffle (which was cribbed from his previous employer) and hand them over. In practicel terms it was ABSOLUTELY nothing but a box ticking exercise. We didn't care, and the customers never read them - they just wanted to tick the box so they could feel comfortable at having (so they thought) covered their backsides.

I was at a job once and the manager in the office asked me about such things. My reply was that "if I fall off the ladder, I'm the one going to be in pain - as I don't like pain, I'll be careful not to fall off a ladder". He fully understood and replied "ah, the French approach".

In my few years doing domestic electrical work, very very few of my customers knew of or cared about certification & compliance. Recently they have, when some have tried to sell their houses and been asked for EIC or minor works and compliance certificates. I was able to supply copies and or give them the compliance cert number.

I’ve not been privy to the new consultation on outsourcing minor works, but the company I work for are pretty astute, and place the risk on the contractor. When things go wrong, they just place it in the hands of their lawyers, and let them deal with the matter.

If I was daft enough to fall off a ladder, my employer would ask why I went up in the first place. The English risk adverse method

 

[Robson689]

"Part P" is pretty much irrelevant - literally all it (effectively) says is that "electrical work must be safe". IIRC it does not even mention BS7671, that's only in the guidance document which is not the law. Pretty well everything that people mean when they say "Part P" is the notification requirements in the Building Regs.

It also puts the responsibility on the homeowner for notification so a qualified electrician doing notifiable work without scheme membership is not doing anything wrong. As long as the relevant certification is issued the electrician has complied with their requirements in full...