Indeed, and as I recall your argument seems to go along the lines of the cable becoming part of the whatever exempt item (socket, light etc.) is being added, whereas I see the cable as being part of the work which consists of adding the whatever. Adding a cable may be a necessary part of the job of adding a socket, but the cable can never become part of the socket itself - That's nonsensical.
The cable becomes part of the socket with respect to its notifiability status.
You accept that Schedule 4 does not explicitly make the cable which you add when adding a socket non-notifiable, and that it's taken as read that adding the cable is part of the work, and because the socket is non-notifiable so is the cable.
That's what I mean by atomic, and inheritance. In terms of deciding wether the work is notifiable or not you look at the socket, not the cable.
What's nonsensical is to then say ah yes but if the socket isn't outdoors but the cable is we do suddenly have to consider the notifiability of it separately from the socket.
The installation of the cable becomes an intrinsic part of the work, yes. It cannot become an intrinsic part of the socket.
It is an intrinsic part of the socket with respect to being notifiable or not.
Leaving aside outdoor wiring, the installation of the cable for an extension to feed a socket becomes exempt because it is part of the "work which consists of adding" the socket, not because it can in any way become part of the socket itself.
If you are adding a socket in a living room you are happy to take it as read that the unmentioned cable isn't notifiable because the socket isn't.
But if you are adding a socket in a detached garage you are not happy to take it as read that the unmentioned cable isn't notifiable even though the socket isn't.
And that's not nonsensical?
The cable is undoubtedly outdoors. Just because the installation of the cable is a necessary part of the work which consists of adding a socket (which is itself indoors) can't change that.
OK - so what's "outdoors"?
What if the garage was detached, but accessible from the house via a shared basement? Would a cable running from the house to the garage through the basement be outdoors?
If not, why not? What is is about that underground route which makes the cable not outdoors when the OP's proposed cable buried 50cm under paving is outdoors?
What if the garage was no longer fully detached, but was linked to the house via a first-floor extension. Would a cable running through that extension and down into a socket in the garage be outdoors? Actually, that one is rhetorical. The Q above about the basement wasn't, but with this extension nobody would say that the cable was outdoors. So let's now replace the extension with a covered corridor, glazed or not - I don't mind. Would a cable running through that be outdoors?
No?
What if we put a locked external door at each end of the corridor and don't heat it - is it outdoors?
What if we then remove parts of the walls, or the glazing - is it outdoors?
What if we remove all of the walls, so it's just a covered walkway - is it outdoors?
What if we remove the roof, so that it is an open walkway - is it outdoors?
Returning to the Schedule 4 Operator's Manual (aka Approved Document P), we note that it says there:
Any new work in, for example, the garden or that involves crossing the garden is notifiable.
It would be interesting to consider the real situation of my house.
The houses in my road are semis, and between them run shared driveways from the road to pairs of detached (from each other and from the houses) garages about 5m beyond the back of the houses. The driveway widens up after the houses, to the width of 2 garages plus a bit. There are fences running at an angle from the corner of each house to the corner of that house's garage. Hopefully you can picture it.
The driveway is concreted over, fenced off from the gardens.
The space between the houses and garages is not a garden.
So - imagine I take a cable from my house, underground, exiting the line of the house under the side wall adjoining the driveway,and then along under the drive and up into the garage. At no point does the cable cross a garden.
Is it outdoors?
Don't you see that all of these questions, inconsistencies and grey areas simply go away if you only consider where the socket is, and not where the cable runs in order to reach it.
In fact - all of these questions, inconsistencies and grey areas only arise in the first place once you stop reading what Schedule 4 says and start introducing your own "what ifs", or start attempting to "simplify" the list of non-notifiable work.
Which brings us right back to the question of what precisely "outdoor electric power installation" is supposed to include. Yes, my initial interpretation of that is that it means any part of the work which is outdoors. Is the cable outdoors? Yes. Is it part of an electric power installation? Yes. Schedule 4 doesn't say anything about whether it's feeding something inside which is itself exempt from notification, only that the job must not involve "work on a special installation." If the underground cable is considered to be part of an "outdoor electric power installation," then installing it must count as "work on a special installation." That would make the intra-house cable running a few feet along the outside of the wall notifiable as well, as noted previously.
Yes, but.. in that case... but that would mean... in which case...
Just stop doing all of that. Make all of those problems vanish (or rather stop creating all of those problems yourself).
Just focus on the socket.
Is the socket notifiable?
No? End of - you may add it without notification.
Yes? End of - you may not add it without notification.
But that is, by at least one way of interpreting schedule 4, what the regulations are doing. 2(b) doesn't say that the socket being added must not be part of the special installation. It says that the job must "not involve work on a special installation," which I would take to encompass the job in its entirety. The only issue is whether a cable by itself constitutes a "special installation," i.e. an "outdoor electric power installation" - Back to that same question.
You said that the cable is an integral part of the work - it cannot be both that and discrete.
Just focus on the socket.
Is the socket notifiable?
No? End of - you may add it without notification.
Yes? End of - you may not add it without notification.
There's no need to seek to break schedule 4 - It's already broken.
It is not without its flaws, but it is nowhere near as broken as it appears to be when
you deliberately choose to operate it in a way which breaks it.
Back to our machine again, with the levers and knobs.
Imagine you were employing someone to work such a machine, and he persisted in pulling and twiddling combinations of controls which caused it to jam.
"Machine's jammed again, boss"
"Why? What did you do?"
"Well, I pulled this and turned that, like it says in the manual"
"But the manual is wrong -we've been over this before - if you do what it says in the manual the thing jams up. I've shown you how to make it work"
"Yeah but the manual says to do it that way"
"Don't do what the manual says - do it so that the machine works, OK?"
Shortly later....
"Machine's jammed again, boss"
"Why? What did you do?"
"Well, I pulled this and turned that, like it says in the manual"
How long would you put up with that before you sacked him?