EICR Faults

[JohnW2]

But maybe some landlords associations have pockets deep enough to take the electrician to court seeking damages for incompetent work?

As EFLI has said, so long as EICRs remain so dependent upon personal opinions, discretions and judgements, I can't see that any court could really say that some individual opinions were 'incompetent' - particular given that I'm sure that even a half-competent defence lawyer would be able to find some 'expert witnesses' (other electricians!) who said that they would do exactly the same as the 'defendant' had done!

 

[morqthana]

I think you're correct. The 'inspection' (essentially an EICR, although the legislation does not call it that) has to be done in relation to present-day regs, although the legislation is not very clear on this, the associated "Guidance for Landlords" not only uses the term "EICR" but also makes it clear that things coded as C3 do not need to be 'remedied'.

It also explicitly says

doesn't even need to be mentioned.

However, if (as sounds as if it probably the case for the OP) the plastic CU has been given a C2, then there would be a requirement to 'upgrade' it - and with no appeal process against that coding of which I am aware

The guidance, not issued by the Government but stated by them as being "useful" says that a plastic CU is either not deserving of a comment at all or does not require upgrading.

So there is a form of appeal, which is to say to the electrician "I'm not paying you. Take me to court if you wish". It would need the client to have resources he's willing to expend, or backers with ditto, and with a sufficiently hard-nosed attitude to engage in what I believe is known as "lawfare".

Similarly

As EFLI has said, so long as EICRs remain so dependent upon personal opinions, discretions and judgements, I can't see that any court could really say that some individual opinions were 'incompetent' - particular given that I'm sure that even a half-competent defence lawyer would be able to find some 'expert witnesses' (other electricians!) who said that they would do exactly the same as the 'defendant' had done!

Bear in mind that a civil case works on balance of probabilities, not beyond reasonable doubt, and the scenario here is an electrician not following the guidance deemed useful by the Government and created by a long list of electrical organisations including the one which writes the regulations.

Expect even a half-competent plaintiff lawyer to ask

"Why do you disagree with the Electrical Contractors Association?"
"Why do you disagree with the National Association of Professional Inspectors and Testers?"
"Why do you disagree with the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting?"
"Why do you disagree with the British Standards Institute?"
"Why do you disagree with the Institution of Engineering and Technology?"

Expect those to be asked of the defendant and his expert witness(es).

Expect the defendant and his expert witness(es) to be asked some of (subsequent ones depending on earlier answers) "Do you actually think it was unsafe?" "Have you always thought it unsafe?" "What made you change your mind?" "Are you telling the court that in all your years as an electrician you never once installed a plastic consumer unit?"

You can see how it would go.

And at the finish, is the balance of probability that the report was not competently done?

 

[morqthana]

Please state the regulation.
Government guidelines are opinions.

Well, ericmark quoted the regulations:

But every edition of BS7671 says with the pre-amble

Installations designed after "date" are to comply with BS 7671:date.
The Regulations apply to the design. erection and verification of electrical installations, also additions and alterations to existing installations. Existing installations that have been installed in accordance with earlier editions of the Regulations may not comply with this edition in every respect. This does not necessarily mean that they are unsafe for continued use or require upgrading.

It seems to me that simple logic says this:

1) A law requires <something> to comply with a particular version of some regulations.
2) That version of the regulations says they only apply to <somethings> made after a certain date.
3) That version of the regulations says that <somethings> made before that date are not necessarily unsafe, and do not necessarily have to be upgraded.
4) All that means that an old <something> is allowed to continue in use because that's what the regulations say, therefore the continued use of <something> complies with the regulations.

And if the guidelines, issued by all sorts of organisations more authoritative than an individual electrician, including as I observed above the one which writes the official standard, explicitly state a different opinion to one held by an individual electrician, that makes his opinion somewhat questionable.

So, what would you do if that was stated on an EICR?

1) Why would that matter to me?

2) How deep are my pockets?

I have no skin in this game, but I do have a friend who owns a couple of rentals, one of which he bought 9-10 years ago, and completely refurbished to a high standard (nicer than my house), including a rewire done by a pukka electrician and fully certified as 100% AOK.

Not many years later, all of a sudden, with no tenant fiddling or DIY bodgery to the electrics, it's no longer safe for people to live there.

Bllcks.

AFAIR his "problem" was not having a metal CU, and now, from what I can gather here, it's all down to what some random electrician's "opinion" is, when such "opinion" is not challengeable, and doesn't have to have any explicit or unambiguous underpinning in regulations, and may in fact be based on which particular "best practice guide" he decided to follow. (Why? Can't he effin think for himself?).

Bllcks.

So, "overnight" his flat went from being safe to let to a tenant, to one which was illegally dangerous?

Bllcks.


What would happen, seriously, if in the case of my friend's flat, an electrician had said "It's safe. In my opinion the regulations mean that not meeting every requirement in every respect is acceptable."

Look at the Best Practice Guide referenced on the Govt's own website:

What would happen, seriously, to an electrician who says "The guidance approved by the Government says I have to record non compliances that may give rise to danger, and my opinion is that that means that non compliances that do not give rise to danger do not have to be recorded"?

Who would drag that electrician into court to have him pronounced wrong?

Why shouldn't the NRLA etc draw up a list of electricians who agree to sign up to a BPG which is sensible?

A number of people here have said the current situation is a mess, and AFAICT it is. But probably, as per, nobody will fix the mess without a lot of shouting and fighting in which, regrettably, there will be casualties.

It needs landlords, with the full support and backing of a landlord association, to actually fight back. Even if in the process individual electricians are driven into bankruptcy from damages or just the cost of fighting lawsuits.

 

[ericmark]

It seems to me that simple logic says this:

1) A law requires <something> to comply with a particular version of some regulations.
2) That version of the regulations says they only apply to <somethings> made after a certain date.
3) That version of the regulations says that <somethings> made before that date are not necessarily unsafe, and do not necessarily have to be upgraded.
4) All that means that an old <something> is allowed to continue in use because that's what the regulations say, therefore the continued use of <something> complies with the regulations.

And if the guidelines, issued by all sorts of organisations more authoritative than an individual electrician, including as I observed above the one which writes the official standard, explicitly state a different opinion to one held by an individual electrician, that makes his opinion somewhat questionable.

Yes that is about it. So the EICR changed from 4 codes to 3 codes because the IET felt that the does not comply with current edition code was unhelpful, and confusing to the home owner so was dropped. The letter C was put in front of new codes, to show new system being used.

It was always a problem working out if an installation complied with the edition current when designed. The big thing of course was to know when designed, the inspector should be given the previous EICR's so they can see if the installation has degraded, and can compare results, if they have not been given the previous report, then they can only assume some thing has been added so it now must comply with current edition.

However with no code 4, how does one show that? And does it need showing?

There are a few changes which can mean an old installation should fail, the main one is earth bonding in bathrooms, the 2008 edition allowed reduced earth bonding on condition the installation was protected with a RCD at 30 mA. The use of plastic pipes has resulted in it being hard to comply with the earth bonding for pre-RCD installations.

Through the years there have been others, pre-1966 filament bulbs did not require an earth taking to them, today you can't buy filament bulbs, so even using pre-1966 regulations earths are required to lights. It also said pendent lamp, so any lamp not dangling from the ceiling needs an earth, even pre-1966.

We are today reminded about the problems with DC and RCD's. Why the change, I don't know, as the central heating three port valve has for many years allowed DC, and even the type A RCD is only good for 6 mA, so unless combined with some DC detection device, the change from type AC to type A does very little. However the inspector must consider how likely it is to get DC at the RCD. The devices that can produce DC have increased, with washing machines using inverter drives, same with freezers etc.

And reading the regulations even in 2008 it talked about:-
(iii) take account of danger that may arise from the failure of a single circuit such as a lighting circuit
(iv) reduce the possibility of unwanted tripping of RCDs due to excessive protective conductor currents produced by equipment in normal operation

This means a pedantic inspector could fail an installation with just two RCD's, even when in 2008 that was common practice. In 2008 we in the trade did not consider a RCD formed a circuit, this has been now clarified, and this is a major problem, it was not a change in the regulations, it was a clarification.

So most don't want to stick their neck out, so follow the best practice guide.

 

[ebee]

Just to add there was a few years back in "Wiring Matters" by one of the IEE (IET now) senior engineers an article considering that a single RCD in itself did not fall foul of the division of circuits criteria, of course RCDs were not as common as nowadays but that was the perceived thinking at that time, personally I disagreed although I did (and still do have) a front end RCD for normal circuits and ditto for heating. In fact I come from an era where RCDs were very uncommon and it was just a rewireable fuse for each circuit.

 

[ericmark]

Just to add there was a few years back in "Wiring Matters" by one of the IEE (IET now) senior engineers an article considering that a single RCD in itself did not fall foul of the division of circuits criteria, of course RCDs were not as common as nowadays but that was the perceived thinking at that time, personally I disagreed although I did (and still do have) a front end RCD for normal circuits and ditto for heating. In fact I come from an era where RCDs were very uncommon and it was just a rewireable fuse for each circuit.

In the days of 100 mA RCD's that would have also been my thinking, we had a 1 amp with 5 minute delay RCD feeding a huge lump of the installation, this was divided down to RCD's each with a reduced current and tripping time.

In the early days, the problem was lack of neutral switching or isolating, and there was a problem with neutral - earth faults.

In the early days we had auto resetting RCD's no longer permitted with domestic, and also it was common to have dedicated feeds for essential equipment like freezers, not RCD protected, my freezers are still supplied from two RCD sockets, and the central heating is not RCD protected, and I have a compliance certificate for this dated 2023. It was part of the solar installation.

I fitted RCD's in around 1992, can't remember exact date, my son had passed his RAE exam at 14 years old, and I was worried about him playing with mains power, so two RCD's fed the two 4 way Wylex fuse box, with the fuses swapped for MCB's. And it was because of the problems over the years, why this house as mainly RCBO's (14 of them) except for the UPS supplies.

But @JohnW2 has pointed out the problems. I remember as an apprentice going to work on a road bridge, which still had open knife switches, clearly that can no longer be permitted, even if it was permitted when the bridge was designed. And we would not consider ELCB-v to be safe today, as we have seen the problems with other earth routes.

But the main problem with BS7671 is clarification. It has now been stated that buildings or structures which are similar in nature to a caravan, must not have a TN-C-S supply, I can see that being a can of worms. The oh dear, we need to change the supplies to 200 mobile homes is not an easy task.

These things come to try us, we it seems have a fantastic number of teleswitches which need changing by June 30 specially it seems in Scotland. These things happen, and we have to find a way around the problems.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in a court case over the EICR, but I would not want to fight the case, even if I was to win, it is a rather time consuming exercise, I can do without. already we have been talking about this for 6 days, and one has 28 days from date when EICR issued to sort it. It took me 6 months to update in my own house, I do not like the idea of trying to find someone to do the work within the permitted time.

A private landlord is not to be taken to be in breach of the duty under paragraph (1) if the private landlord can show they have taken all reasonable steps to comply with that duty.

The whole law is full of phrases like "qualified person" means a person competent to undertake the inspection and testing required under regulation 3(1) and any further investigative or remedial work in accordance with the electrical safety standards; also “electrical installation” means fixed electrical cables or fixed electrical equipment located on the consumer's side of the electricity supply meter; these definitions are often not what we would consider, I read this as meaning if there are for example equipment which requires a gas safe certificate to check the electrical connections, to be considered as a qualified person one would need to be gas safe registered.

But it has already been pointed out EICR is not used in the law, so some items will need to be tested by specialists, and it requires a building manager to work out who tests each part.

 

[JohnW2]

It also explicitly says
View attachment 382456
doesn't even need to be mentioned.

I don't think we can be looking at, or talking about, the same "Guidance for Landlords". ...

The guidance, not issued by the Government but stated by them as being "useful" says that a plastic CU is either not deserving of a comment at all or does not require upgrading.

Again as above. What do you mean by "not issued" by the Government? In what sense is (this document) not 'issued' by the Government ?

 

[morqthana]

I don't think we can be looking at, or talking about, the same "Guidance for Landlords". ...

I'm looking at one of the documents which the Goverment says contains guidance that may be useful for landlords

Again as above. What do you mean by "not issued" by the Government? In what sense is (this document) not 'issued' by the Government ?

The charity Electrical Safety First have put together a suite of guidance that may be useful for landlords in understanding the standard:

• Guidance for landlords
• Guidance for tenants
• Classification Codes best practice guide 4
• 18th Edition Wiring Regulations Q&A

It is the 3rd one in the list which says that a plastic CU NOT under a wooden staircase or in a sole escape route doesn't need to be given any code at all.

It's Electrical Safety First who have issued the guidance documents, not the Government, but I would argue that the latter has given them its seal of approval.

 

[EFLImpudence]

It's Electrical Safety First who have issued the guidance documents, not the Government, but I would argue that the latter has given them its seal of approval.

How many experienced electricians are there in the Government who might have the knowledge to give a seal of approval to such things?

What happens when you, with all your experience and knowledge, disagree with ESF?

 

[morqthana]

How many experienced electricians are there in the Government who might have the knowledge to give a seal of approval to such things?

That I don't know.

But I do know that it is not populated by people who are such idiots that they would look at this list of organisations which had agreed on the guidance

and behave as if they were of so little consequence that their "opinion" carried no more weight than that of an individual electrician.

What happens when you, with all your experience and knowledge, disagree with ESF?

Well, I'm not such a person, but hypothetically, if I was, and I did disagree, what should happen would be for me to be very closely questioned as to why I disagreed with the Association of Electrical Safety Managers, why I disagreed with BEAMA, why I disagreed with British Gas, why I disagreed with the British Standards Institute, why I disagreed with City & Guilds, why I disagreed with the Electrical Contractors Association, why I disagreed with the Institution of Engineering and Technology, why I disagreed with the National Association of Professional Inspectors and Testers, why I disagreed with the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting, why I disagreed with SELECT, why I disagreed with the Society for Public Architecture, Construction, Engineering & Surveying.

What should happen would be for my reason(s) why to be very closely examined. What should happen would be for my reason(s) why to have to be based on significant, concrete, verifiable evidence which showed that all those organisations were wrong.

What should happen would be for a contrary opinion of mine to be given no credence whatsoever if it had absolutely nothing to justify it, any more than me saying "Well, he was wearing pink socks, and in my opinion people who wear pink socks shouldn't be allowed to be landlords so I gave him a fail" should be given any credence.

What should happen would be for me to be told that if I gave an "opinion" which contradicted that of a large number of qualified engineers, including ones who actually write the regulations, and for which I could not advance any justification, that I had not been competent.

No matter how strongly someone holds an unjustifiable opinion that something should be a different way, their route to bringing that way about is to campaign and lobby the appropriate people, not to force their unjustifiable opinion onto others.

What actually happens, it seems is that someone can disregard all those expert organisations and impose unnecessary costs and inconvenience onto a landlord for no justifiable reason(s), but just because he wants to.

 

[EFLImpudence]

Did you recently note that one of Napit's recommendations disagreed with one of ESF's?

 

[EFLImpudence]

What actually happens, it seems is that someone can disregard all those expert organisations and impose unnecessary costs and inconvenience onto a landlord for no justifiable reason(s), but just because he wants to.

Or, perhaps, avert unnecessary costs and inconvenience.

 

[pete01]

Err so to sum up...

Plastic consumer unit C3

High Ze problem for the DNO

Jeeezzzzz

 

[JohnW2]

I'm looking at one of the documents which the Goverment says contains guidance that may be useful for landlords

Fair enough, but just to clarify what you are looking at is "one of the documents which the Government-issued Guidance says contains guidance that may be useful for landlords".

You appear to have slid a little off the point to which yiou were apparently responding. As you correctly quoted in your reply, I had merely made the point that (contrary to what EFLI seemed to be suggesting) "Government Guidance for Landlords" was very clear in saying that landlords were not required to 'remedy' things coded as C3 - and that was actually IN the Government's guidance document, not in some other document which they were saying 'may be useful'.

It is the 3rd one in the list which says that a plastic CU NOT under a wooden staircase or in a sole escape route doesn't need to be given any code at all.

I know, and I certainly don't disagree (although I'm also happy with it just being C3), and have never suggested otherwise.

It's Electrical Safety First who have issued the guidance documents, not the Government, but I would argue that the latter has given them its seal of approval.

I suppose one can debate whether a statement that something "may be useful" constitutes "giving a seal of approval". In a subsequent post, you give a list of many of the organisations which have "agreed on the guidance", and since that guidance encompasses countless different issues, I cannot believe that every one of those organisation actually agrees unreservedly with every point of detail in the guidance - so I don't think one can realistically believe that every one of those organisations (and Government) necessarily fully agree with any particular issue of detail in the guidance.

 

[SimonH2]

... the inspector should be given the previous EICR's so they can see if the installation has degraded, and can compare results, if they have not been given the previous report, then they can only assume some thing has been added so it now must comply with current edition.

How do you come to that conclusion ?
One reason for not giving out the previous report is to prevent "copy & paste" testing.
And adding "something" does not automatically mean the installation (I assume that's what you mean by "it") has to comply with current regs - that depends on what was added.