Minor Works Certificate for DIY’ers.

I accept that diyers will carry out work that is not tested 'properly'. However, until a circuit is tested neither I nor anybody else can know whether it is safe. The set of tests are not there to give a jobsworth ammunition to use against us, they are there to prove the circuit is safe. My advice is learn how to do the job properly, or leave it to somebody who knows what is required and is able to do it.

scousespark said:

I accept that diyers will carry out work that is not tested 'properly'. However, until a circuit is tested neither I nor anybody else can know whether it is safe. The set of tests are not there to give a jobsworth ammunition to use against us, they are there to prove the circuit is safe. My advice is learn how to do the job properly, or leave it to somebody who knows what is required and is able to do it.

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It is, of course, very difficult to disagree with the advice you are giving. However, I'm not sure in what sense you "accept" that DIYers will "carry out work that is not tested 'properly' " - do you perhaps mean 'acknowledge', or do you really meant 'accept'?.

I am sure you must acknowledge the reality that the vast majority of those who undertake DIY electrical work do not, and are never going to, undertake 'full proper testing'. If you regard the absence of such testing as unacceptable, one would therefore expect you to simply oppose the 'acceptability' (or perhaps even legality) of virtually all DIY electrical work - except perhaps in hands of the tiny, very atypical, handful of 'DIYers' who do have the knowledge and facilities to understand and interpret the required tests, as well as to understand 'what they are doing'.

Kind Regards, John

JohnW2 said:

... one would therefore expect you to simply oppose the 'acceptability' (or perhaps even legality) of virtually all DIY electrical work - except perhaps in hands of the tiny, very atypical, handful of 'DIYers' who do have the knowledge and facilities to understand and interpret the required tests, as well as to understand 'what they are doing'.

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Which of course brings us round (roughly) to the situation from 2005 to 2013 which many of us criticised for being counterproductive. I don't think I'm alone in thinking the restrictions then in place placed unnecessary costs on those who were competent, while encouraging the very people who it attempted to stop to simply "keep quiet" rather than risk exposing their activities by asking for help.
Not to mention the dangers from (for example) people continuing to use multi-way adapters and extension leads rather than having extra sockets added and so on. We all know that the whole industry was careful to make sure people knew that it was legal to add sockets to an existing circuit, and no-one every pulled the "but Part P" argument to encourage people to part with more money

One one hand I agree that in an ideal world, we should never "encourage" someone to do something they aren't fully qualified and competent to do. I don't think many (I nearly wrote "any", but I can think of at least one person here that would) here would dispute that in the real world, people do tackle work that is perhaps a bit beyond their competence - so the argument is to what extent to you help those to be as "least unsafe" as possible, without appearing to be encouraging people to tackle such work.

SimonH2 said:

Which of course brings us round (roughly) to the situation from 2005 to 2013 which many of us criticised for being counterproductive. I don't think I'm alone in thinking the restrictions then in place placed unnecessary costs on those who were competent, while encouraging the very people who it attempted to stop to simply "keep quiet" rather than risk exposing their activities by asking for help. ... Not to mention the dangers from (for example) people continuing to use multi-way adapters and extension leads rather than having extra sockets added and so on.

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Quite so. The system could only have achieved what it was presumably intended to achieve during that period had it been very robustly and aggressively 'policed', which would simply not have been practical or workable.

SimonH2 said:

One one hand I agree that in an ideal world, we should never "encourage" someone to do something they aren't fully qualified and competent to do. I don't think many (I nearly wrote "any", but I can think of at least one person here that would) here would dispute that in the real world, people do tackle work that is perhaps a bit beyond their competence - so the argument is to what extent to you help those to be as "least unsafe" as possible, without appearing to be encouraging people to tackle such work.

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Exactly. Although that same "at least one person" would strongly disagree, it is a dilemma. Whilst we would all agree that it's not ideal, and although there obviously have to be limits, there seems to be a lot to be said for the pragmatic approach of trying to help an OP be "at least as unsafe as possible" (rather than telling them that they must only do the work if it is done "as safely as is possible", and naively believe that many will take any notice) - but, again, "at least one person" will strongly disagree with that!

Kind Regards, John