Two NICEIC installers failed to spot the lack of earth

[JosephandAmber]

Agent contacts me with an urgent request for a CU upgrade in Camden. They send over an EICR done the previous month and I have a quick skim. All seems pretty simple, CU needs an upgrade and some basic tidying of fixtures etc. Only 3 circuits so I'm not overly bothered about doing another EICR prior to doing the CU replacement.

Turn up to the property and within 10 mins I note there is no visible MET, nor is there any visible earth supply coming from the head. So I head inside and run some tests, again no earth. So I knock on the basement property and ask to test their installation, again no earth. Ok, so by this point I'm baffled by the lack of a main earth. So I called UKPN who send an engineer and he confirmed my fears, the property has never had an earth supply nor will they add one. As a result, he then issues all 4 flats with a Sec 26 ESQCR notice and turns off power to the entire building.

As you can imagine with 4 privately rented flats each with their own agents and landlords it kicks off. Turns out 2 of the 4 flats had EICRs completed within the past 3 months. One had a new CU installed. The property HAS NO EARTH!

Both EICRs were issued by NICEIC approved installers. Readings were recorded that could not have physically been taken. What is going on!?

 

[Midwest]

At the local police station by me they closed the custody suite and now take anyone arrested to another police station about 15 miles away the PCC say it saves just around £630k per year somebody has recently costed all the police time lost in tranporting them to another police station when they could be policing the local area and local officers traveling to interview them and it is believed to be costing somewhere in the region of £1.3m people are trying to understand where the saving is

Custody suites requirements have changed over the course of time. Just to have a couple of cells, and someone checking on prisoners every couple of hours is insufficient now, has been for some years now. Isn't viable for every nick to have a custody suite. When a police officer arrests someone, in takes them out of the system for a couple of hours anyway. The only cost is the time transporting, that is swallowed up by ground rents etc, custody officers, medical person etc etc.

 

[Midwest]

I disagree.
While the primary cause is lying scum - the thing that lets them get away with it is the failure of the scams to police standards. When registered contractors can do substandard work or miss blatant faults when inspecting, and the scams do nothing about it, then there's precious little holding up standards across the industry. It will be interesting to see what happens with the two involved in missing the lack of earthing and lying about what testing/inspection they've done - my money is "nothing at all"

I can’t disagree with your point of the schemes not doing something about transgressors, but are the majority not ‘law abiding‘ members? So it does something to uphold standards to a point.

 

[LukeD]

IF someone like "Watchdog" took a look at the industry and did a really good 1 hour special showing how pathetic it is .Perhaps we might see a much better control and policing of issues in the Electrical and gas world .

 

[DPG]

IF someone like "Watchdog" took a look at the industry and did a really good 1 hour special showing how pathetic it is .Perhaps we might see a much better control and policing of issues in the Electrical and gas world .

Last time I saw something relating to electrical work on Watchdog it recommended that people should use an NIC registered company so that there would be no risk of a bad job!

 

[UNG]

Custody suites requirements have changed over the course of time. Just to have a couple of cells, and someone checking on prisoners every couple of hours is insufficient now, has been for some years now. Isn't viable for every nick to have a custody suite. When a police officer arrests someone, in takes them out of the system for a couple of hours anyway. The only cost is the time transporting, that is swallowed up by ground rents etc, custody officers, medical person etc etc.

You take a very simplistic and isolated cost justification in an attempt to justify closing custody suites and not every police station has had a custody suite for many many years. The custody suites were generally only at the main divisional police stations for many years and this is now moving to one or two custody suites for whole force areas. A couple of hours to process an arrest is now taking 2 or 3 times that so most of an officers shift is lost
Once investigating officers have to travel to interview a suspect at a remote custody suite the costs start to escalate as I said in my previous post making savings in one way is massively increasing costs in another, savings and inefficiencies never seem to be looked at when making some of these decisions

IF someone like "Watchdog" took a look at the industry and did a really good 1 hour special showing how pathetic it is .Perhaps we might see a much better control and policing of issues in the Electrical and gas world .

Watchdog only perpetuates this myth that using a registered contractor is your guarantee of good workmanship and continually promotes the NICEIC so I doubt them doing any investigation

Last time I saw something relating to electrical work on Watchdog it recommended that people should use an NIC registered company so that there would be no risk of a bad job!

I saw that one, made me chuckle at the time

 

[Midwest]

You take a very simplistic and isolated cost justification in an attempt to justify closing custody suites and not every police station has had a custody suite for many many years. The custody suites were generally only at the main divisional police stations for many years and this is now moving to one or two custody suites for whole force areas. A couple of hours to process an arrest is now taking 2 or 3 times that so most of an officers shift is lost
Once investigating officers have to travel to interview a suspect at a remote custody suite the costs start to escalate as I said in my previous post making savings in one way is massively increasing costs in another, savings and inefficiencies never seem to be looked at when making some of these decisions

Watchdog only perpetuates this myth that using a registered contractor is your guarantee of good workmanship and continually promotes the NICEIC so I doubt them doing any investigation

I saw that one, made me chuckle at the time

We are going off topic but In my police force area, custody suites are geographically located to the main towns and cities. Oxford for example used to have a custody suite, now closed. As are a lot of front desks.
The time lost is down to other things, other than travelling for half an hour or so.

 

[ipf]

We are going off topic but In my police force area, custody suites are geographically located to the main towns and cities. Oxford for example used to have a custody suite, now closed. As are a lot of front desks.
The time lost is down to other things, other than travelling for half an hour or so.

It's getting bloody ridiculous, these days.........nowhere to have a decent nights kip after good night on the pop....

 

[Midwest]

My eldest used to sleep under parked cars.

 

[Simon47]

My eldest used to sleep under parked cars.

Doesn't sound very clever, what if someone drives off before they can wake up and get out ?

Having said that, apparently back in the days of steam, one of the fireman's checks first thing was to check there wasn't anyone sleeping in the firebox. On the big engines, this was a surprisingly large space (up to 14 feet long !) and it wasn't uncommon for people to crawl in as a nice warm space to sleep. Apparently there were more than a few cases where they weren't noticed before lighting up

 

[Midwest]

Doesn't sound very clever, what if someone drives off before they can wake up and get out ?

I know, he was a friggin idiot.