Is Part P Being Ignored?

[jellycat]

I'm looking to get some rewiring done. I know that I need to hire a Part P registered electrician or go the building regs route.

But while I've been doing some research and talking to friends who've had work done, it seems to me a lot of people are ignoring Part P or don't know about it.

Don't worry, I don't intend to ignore it! I just wondered what people think about Part P?

Interesting discussion here:

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/cutti...ets-remove-part-p-of-the-building-regulations

 

[ericmark]

This has already been brought up and of course no Part P registered electrician will want it removed so not likely to get support on here.

Part P is flawed and to be able to put extra sockets in a utility room with sinks etc. But not a kitchen because it has a food preparation area is silly. But complain and they will include any room with sink rather than drop requirements for kitchens.

The same in a kitchen where you can use an extension lead but to add a few clips and fasten to wall out of harms way required Part P notification.

And my son can work as an inspector and tester for a firm but when he comes home can't even work on my kitchen.

The biggest complaint must be charges as although on a full rewire paying the LABC £200 seems OK to do inspection to pay £100+ to fit one socket is of course OTT.

It has not been updated and all the government sites have instructions referring to a obsolete set of regulations (BS7671:2001) why they didn't just say BS7671 I don't know?

But it does reduce the amount of DIY and is a step in right direction. To me it should have been same as gas which says you can't charge for any work done unless registered but there was nothing to stop a gas fitter going home and working on his own house.

Also with GAS the person is registered not just the company but my son has changed his status many times as he moves from firm to firm and he has never taken any Part P test he just has C&G 2382 and 2391 like any other electrician as do I. Although a firm must have some one qualified they it seems do not need to view my sons qualifications they take his word for it that he has them.

Although the sole trader is tested and has to satisfy the scheme operator this does not happen with larger firms and there is no or little check on who they employ.

Scrap Part P yes. But it would need something to replace it. Like a car driving licence that once taken lasts for life unless you are caught doing things wrong then it can be removed from you.

 

[dingbat]

Here we go again.

Part P is an important requirement.

All it actually requires is that reasonable provision be made for electrical safety.

There is no such thing as a Part P qualification, you cannot 'be' Part P, nor can you be 'Part P Registered', despite the use of this terminology by some of the competent persons schemes.

Almost every single post on that thread has been made by people who do not realise any of this because all they see is an unwanted check of their work.
If they actually read the requirements they would see that Part P itself is absolute common sense, but instead they prefer to accept hearsay, handed down, ill-conceived opinion and advice and attack the wrong target.

Is Part P being ignored?

Of course it is. Not everybody knows, understands or abides by the law. A few examples:

Mobile phone use while driving - and that really does kill people.
Blatant and widespread benefit fraud.
Illegal entry into the country.
Tax evasion
The breeding and keeping of dangerous dogs.

Feel free to add dozens of other examples...

So many people actually believe that if they disagree with a law they can simply ignore it.
What chance would a reasonable safety requirement have when so many people see themselves above any kind of rules at all?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I decided to stop reading any more of the "interesting discussion" when I got to this twerp's comment:

I don't know the regulations but have an excuse. They're unreadable. There is a set of vague regulations, interpreted by different inspectors in different ways, and a team of civil servants trying to write plain english guides for different kinds of reader.
.
.
Oh about wiring. How do you get hurt by 240v AC? I've had several mains shocks and nothing too shocking happened. My hunch is that these wiring regulations I know nothing about should go.

 

[sparkiedave]

Part P was ill thought out, but the intention was good, if a customer pays good money for a building extension, or a new kitchen etc, they deserve to have the electrical and gas work done by competetent, accountable tradespeople, not by a kitchen fitter or bricky "who's fairly handy with electrics", I, along with many others, have been witness to shoddy electrical work done by everyone and his dog in the past, I'm currently working on a place where a builder put a power supply in to a separate outbuilding using 16mm meter tails underground, 200mm from the surface, next to the water supply pipe & no warning tape, he was going to connect this to a sub board, the sub board has a 32amp supply to it, the demand for the outbuilding amounts to 74amps!
The customers didn't know he'd done anything wrong untill he didn't turn up for a few weeks and they asked me if I'd go and have a look with a view to "just connecting it up!" 33 metres of 25mm SWA later, and a load of other work rectifying the rubbish that had been thrown in, the builder is no-where to be seen, all getting sorted properly, just feel sorry for customers who get stitched up for such shoddy work, mostly in complete ignorance

 

[ericmark]

Part P was ill thought out, but the intention was good,

Yes that is very true. The stopping of kitchen fitters doing their own electrical work was required.

But charging £100+ for the smallest of job is OTT. I have done one Part P job and the inspector spent half an hour on site before the job started and was never seen again. Luck it was work for the disabled so no charge. But inspector took my installation certificate on trust and never checked the job after completion.

The building inspector admitted he didn't have a clue about electrics so in real terms it is a pure waist of money.

And now new rules allows the building inspector to charge twice. Once to register and a second time for a third party to check the work.

Total rip off.

 

[dingbat]

Part P is not the problem.

This is the problem: Very few people really understand electrical safety and this includes many qualified electricians. The trouble is, they think they know all there is to know and resent being told otherwise. To most of those who dabble, the fact that an installation works is proof that they got it right. How dare anybody intervene to say otherwise?

The simple register of qualified electricians that many objectors see as a solution will not work; without regular oversight of work carried out many will slip into bad habits through penny-pinching or ignorance, laziness or sheer incompetence.

I do believe that competent persons should be assessed and I do believe their work should be checked out periodically - ideally on a random basis. But somebody has to pay for it and the scheme membership fees are actually pretty reasonable for a trading enterprise.

As for DIY-ers, yes they may rage that they've been doing it safely for years, but have they? Really? For minor jobs they will continue to do what they have always done with so much regulated building work and simply ignore the requirement to notify. This will never change.

As for the oft-quoted claim that a murky underworld of non-compliant work has been created and that the market has been flooded and devalued by so-called 'five day wonders'. That is just nonsense. There are plenty of examples of non-compliant work carried out by established electrical contractors and even local authorities - most local authority electricians, for instance, have no idea about the requirements in bathrooms and have been confused by supplementary bonding ever since the fifteenth edition came out.

There hasn't been a sudden massive increase in electrical work being undertaken, but there has been a massive increase in the numbers of those already carrying out electrical work being concerned enough to attend courses and gain qualifications. That has to result in a net increase in compliant installations.

 

[dingbat]

I decided to stop reading any more of the "interesting discussion" when I got to this twerp's comment:

I don't know the regulations but have an excuse. They're unreadable. There is a set of vague regulations, interpreted by different inspectors in different ways, and a team of civil servants trying to write plain english guides for different kinds of reader.
.
.
Oh about wiring. How do you get hurt by 240v AC? I've had several mains shocks and nothing too shocking happened. My hunch is that these wiring regulations I know nothing about should go.

Are you sure that isn't tongue in cheek?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Pretty sure.

 

[flameport]

That 'interesting discussion' is nothing of the sort. It is a collection of comments from people who have already decided that any form of legislation is wrong and must be removed regardless of whether it is appropriate or not.

Whatever the comments say, the initial description on that discussion page is totally wrong.

Part P was introduced on the pretext that it would save lives

Not true.

it has cost householders lots of extra money to have electrical work done

Plenty of electrical work is not notifiable, so no additional costs there.
If people have notifiable electrical work done in their home and use a scheme member, the additional costs will be tiny or none.
If someone wanted small notifiable works doing, and for some reason chose a person who was not a scheme member, and then paid the LABC notification fee, then there will be an additional cost. However this is a small percentage of works done, and it is likely that such people wouldn't bother or care about notification anyway.

it has driven many one man electricians out of business since they can't afford the charges

Scheme membership fees are less than £500 per year. If a person operating an electrical business can't afford an extra £10 per week, they were already out of business.

has driven electrical work such as the installation of consumer units into the hands of larger companies who can afford the registration fees

All lies. Even if someone was not a scheme member, paying the notification fee for major works such as a new consumer unit or rewire would only be a small percentage of the total price.

Most of the comments there are wrong as well, or have suggestions which are totally ludicrous. On the second comment, someone suggests that 'Most DIY electricians are competent people & do a safe & tidy job'. Clearly they do not - just look at this forum for plenty of examples.
The rest of the comments are mainly people complaining about huge costs and other problems which do not exist, irrelevant complaints about other legislation and a selection of people who want to scrap all building regulations, make them optional, leave the EU and so on.

 

[1john]

Completly agree with Flameport here, I was a member of the NICEIC before 'part P' was introduced, my prices have not gone up because of 'part P' and dont see why they should, it costs me an additional £1.50 per job to notify. Being with the NICEIC has been brilliant as a one man band, the inspectors are very well trained and you can have objective conversations with them about ammendments to the regs and general good working practices. The way things can go wrong is with larger firms when the QS is the only person being checked. I would think that to be fair that all sparks should be assessed annually in these cases, although the cost of that would be enormous and this is where I beleive the problem lies or where the system is flawed.

 

[mbga9pgf]

I'm looking to get some rewiring done. I know that I need to hire a Part P registered electrician or go the building regs route.

But while I've been doing some research and talking to friends who've had work done, it seems to me a lot of people are ignoring Part P or don't know about it.

Don't worry, I don't intend to ignore it! I just wondered what people think about Part P?

Interesting discussion here:

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/cutti...ets-remove-part-p-of-the-building-regulations

Whether it is important is another issue.

The fact that not one single DIYer has been done under part P yet for work on their own home should tell you all you need to know.

Another crackpot ignored law that was designed to get money flowing into the planning office coffers (plus non-job creation) through the requirement to notify. And defendewd by those who want to carry on pretending that domestic electrical installations are a black art and hard to do, whilst there are still houses out there running off 1940s era wiring.

Part P if correctly instigated could have worked well. But that isnt how it was done.

 

[dingbat]

Another crackpot ignored law that was designed to get money flowing into the planning office coffers (plus non-job creation) through the requirement to notify.

Firstly, building regulation has nothing to do with planning. Get your facts straight.

Secondly, if you bothered to do the research, you'd see that building control offices are hard pushed to deal with direct notification and prefer you to have the work carried out by registered sparks.

Thirdly, just because many many properties are 'running off 1940s era wiring' it does not mean they are safe; especially when incompetent refurbishers try to use it for 21st century demands.

 

[mbga9pgf]

Another crackpot ignored law that was designed to get money flowing into the planning office coffers (plus non-job creation) through the requirement to notify.

Firstly, building regulation has nothing to do with planning. Get your facts straight.

Secondly, if you bothered to do the research, you'd see that building control offices are hard pushed to deal with direct notification and prefer you to have the work carried out by registered sparks.

Thirdly, just because many many properties are 'running off 1940s era wiring' it does not mean they are safe; especially when incompetent refurbishers try to use it for 21st century demands.

If they werent "safe" then the government would insist on owners of buildings with older generation wiring replacing it. As they did with lead piping circa 1980s. As they will do now for you free of charge.

http://www.unitedutilities.com/LeadpipeReplacement.htm

They may not insist, but who benefits from the sparky registration fees then? Or are you forgetting they are taxed too?

Nonsense created by central government. Its ignored by most, if it were actually considered important, they would enforce it. They don't.

 

[1john]

I think that the government are insisting in it being safe, by ensuring work is carried out in accordance with Part P??!! 1940's installations being used in the way they were in 1940 may well be safe, although they are used in 2010 which is completely different. The regulations have evolved to suit the way we have evolved in the way in which we use and now depend on electricity for almost everything. We are much more in contact with electrical items these days than ever we were before hand. Just because something works doesn't make it safe. If the seat belts didn't work in a car but it still worked in every other aspect of being a car, would you deem that to be safe?