Mandatory EICRs - I see ESR are drumming up business !

[RF Lighting]

I've found open busbar chambers, bare live cables hanging out of ceilings, countless missing earths, live faults to missing earths (all the metalwork on the circuit comes live), heavily overloaded cables and circuits, some of which have caused localised fire, all sorts of very dangerous and very easily leathal situations.

As a result of a routine PIR / EICR, these dangerous situations have been made safe, and prevented people from being injured.

Surely that's got to be a good thing?


Here's one. An open circuit ring caused this fire. Fortunatley it was contained within a fire resistant enclosure.

Maybe an EICR could have prevented this?

 

[JohnW2]

I've found open busbar chambers, bare live cables hanging out of ceilings, countless missing earths, live faults to missing earths (all the metalwork on the circuit comes live), heavily overloaded cables and circuits, some of which have caused localised fire, all sorts of very dangerous and very easily leathal situations. As a result of a routine PIR / EICR, these dangerous situations have been made safe, and prevented people from being injured. Surely that's got to be a good thing?

In common sense terms, the answer is obvioulsy 'yes' ('a good thing'). However, I think that the questions Simon was asking was, in hard objective statistical terms, how common are such findings and, in particular, how many actually would have achieved their potential to result in injury/death/damage if they had remained undetected and unaddressed. The latter is obvioulsy more difficult to answer, although I suspect that you would say that many of the 'very dangerous and potentially lethal' things you find have been in that state 'for years'.

As was said earlier in the discussion, I don't think that anyone is disputing that detecting and dealing with dangerous electrical installations (in any type of accommodation) is a good and desirable thing. The question is whether 5-yearly inspections (which, as already mentioned, might fall well short of being 'EICRs') is necessarily the best utilisation of resources in an attempt to achieve that aim.

In passing, I also wonder whether, overall, 'electrical horrors' are actually any more common in private rented accommodation than they are anywhere else. Is that your experience?

Kind Regards, John

 

[RF Lighting]

I used to do a lot of PIRs for letting agents at one firm I worked at. Rental properties were no better, or worse than private homes.

With a new property onto the rental market, it was not uncommon to find faults. Mainly none compliances, occasionally an unsafe situation.

Once the recommendations had been addressed, they usually stayed in a fairly good condition, unless abused by tenants.

I did an EICR on a rented property for a change of tenancy which had been rewired only a few years earlier, and found damaged switchgear, exposed live parts, an improperly connected oven, a bypassed immersion overheat stat.

It is unusual to find that situation, but not unknown.

If you're renting out property, you are running a business. If you lose a little bit of your profit every few years making sure the house is safe for your tenants, then so be it.

 

[JohnW2]

I used to do a lot of PIRs for letting agents at one firm I worked at. Rental properties were no better, or worse than private homes.

As you will realise, that's rather what I rather suspected.

With a new property onto the rental market, it was not uncommon to find faults. Mainly none compliances, occasionally an unsafe situation. Once the recommendations had been addressed, they usually stayed in a fairly good condition, unless abused by tenants.

That also all makes sense.

If you're renting out property, you are running a business. If you lose a little bit of your profit every few years making sure the house is safe for your tenants, then so be it.

...except that it often doesn't work like that with many landlords. They will want to maintain their profit, so will increase rents accordingly. Tenants will therefore often do the paying.

It's the scale of the exercise which is the issue. Per BAS's calculation, the proposal would require about 7000 inspections (whatever they were called) per day - that's only for the private rented sector. As you've suggested above, they are probably no worse than the rest of the properties, so one could well argue that owner-occupiers should be protected to the sameextent as tenants - which would result in an amazing number of inspections (hence cost) per day. Is there not a way in which the same (very large), or lesser, amount (of tenants'/ houseowners'/ landlords' money) could be better spent to improve electrical safety?

Kind Regards, John

 

[RF Lighting]

I would think that 10 year inspections, plus an inspection on change of tennancy would be sufficient.

This ensures the house is safe for the tenants to move into, and brings the recommended duration into line with all domestic installations.

If the installation is made unsafe by tenant abuse, then that's their own fault.

Out of that 7000 inspections per day, don't forget that a good proportion will already be subjected to I&T by letting agents etc.

 

[flameport]

Would you care to guestimate how many faults, that are "likely" to result in a fire or other life threatening situation, do you think would be picked up by a 5 yearly EICR before they actually caused an incident ?

Probably close to none, and the few that are would generally be blatantly obvious to anyone, such as broken fuseboxes, missing covers, sockets hanging off the wall etc.

EICRs have their uses, but they don't really deal with the problems that many older properties have, such as the total lack of RCDs and inadequate numbers of socket outlets.
Unless the outcome is C1 / immediately dangerous, many landlords will do nothing. 'Improvement recommended' and similar are no incentive to do anything.
Regular inspections will just repeat the same old things, which in practice will not be rectified until some other more serious issue occurs, which is usually never.

To improve standards, certain things should be made mandatory in all rented properties.
These would include such items as RCDs for all circuits, a minimum number of socket outlets for each room, suitable lighting for all areas, etc.
Certain items such as rewireable fuseboxes should be banned completely - most people have no idea how to replace the wire correctly and the possibility for misuse is huge.

In many cases, this is the truth:

In other words the whole inspection and testing is a sham done purely to show the HSE that the firm is doing it's best.

 

[JohnW2]

Would you care to guestimate how many faults, that are "likely" to result in a fire or other life threatening situation, do you think would be picked up by a 5 yearly EICR before they actually caused an incident ?

Probably close to none, and the few that are would generally be blatantly obvious to anyone, such as broken fuseboxes, missing covers, sockets hanging off the wall etc.

That's what I suspected (and is presumably also what Simon suspected), and is clearly a problem

EICRs have their uses, but they don't really deal with the problems that many older properties have, such as the total lack of RCDs and inadequate numbers of socket outlets. Unless the outcome is C1 / immediately dangerous, many landlords will do nothing. 'Improvement recommended' and similar are no incentive to do anything.

True, but as we've discussed, the proposed '5-year checks' will not necessarily be EICRs, could come with totally different pass/fail rules from EICRs and would, at least in theory, have considerable 'teeth' associated with them (if properly policed). However, even given that, I do have serious doubts as to whether this very large number of 'checks' would be a very effective, or cost-effective, way of reducing 'bad outcomes'.

There is also the issue I've mentioned of not being at all certain that rented accommodation is much, if at all, worse than any other property on terms of electrical dangers - so restricting the exercise to rented accomodation is perhaps not particularly logical.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Probably close to none, and the few that are would generally be blatantly obvious to anyone, such as broken fuseboxes, missing covers, sockets hanging off the wall etc.

If I could think of a way to search for it I could find at least 1 post here from a tenant reporting a problem as egregious as those where the landlord or agent (who had been sent the photos) was refusing to do anything without a report from an electrician.

 

[SimonH2]

If the installation is made unsafe by tenant abuse, then that's their own fault.

INdeed, that's how it should be. Unfortunately, these days if a tenant is injured by their own stupidity, the question (to someone else) is "why didn't you prevent them harming themselves ?

To improve standards, certain things should be made mandatory in all rented properties.
These would include such items as RCDs for all circuits, a minimum number of socket outlets for each room, suitable lighting for all areas, etc.
Certain items such as rewireable fuseboxes should be banned completely - most people have no idea how to replace the wire correctly and the possibility for misuse is huge.

I see your point, but how far should you take this ? Already many things are mandatory for rented accommodation which are not for owner-occupied houses. The most obvious is gas safety checks every year. Others are coming along in the not too distant future - minimum energy ratings being one. I can see the point, but some properties are by their nature very hard (and costly) to insulate - I can imagine a few being uneconomic and leaving the rental sector. But as landlords we already have to provide an EPC to prospective tenants - so there shouldn't be any question of a tenant not knowing in advance that a property will be hard/expensive to heat and in principal market forces ought to fix the problem (as in, properties with poor EPC ratings should be harder to let and fetch lower rents). This seems to be a case of tenants not looking out for themselves - and others being forced to do it for them. Lets face it, is anyone (at least anyone capable of entering into a tenancy agreement) really so dim that they can't figure out that a (say) F rated house will cost a lot more to heat than a (say) C rated one ?
But back to the lecky side. RCDs - not really a problem. No rewirable fuses - again not really a problem. In reality, if a property still has no RCD and rewirable fuses then that suggests it's somewhat overdue for some upgrades ! But what is an acceptable number of sockets in a room ? What is acceptable lighting ? Both are subjective measures, and always open to someone coming along and claiming that their subjective view is more reliable than someone else's. But again, if you enforce this, then the rent will have to go up to cover it - so you risk actually causing more harm than good if it then prices someone of limited means out of their home.

Probably close to none, and the few that are would generally be blatantly obvious to anyone, such as broken fuseboxes, missing covers, sockets hanging off the wall etc.

If I could think of a way to search for it I could find at least 1 post here from a tenant reporting a problem as egregious as those where the landlord or agent (who had been sent the photos) was refusing to do anything without a report from an electrician.

So in reality, we're back to "Part P" statistics. Because "some small number" of tenants have a problem like that, then "all landlords" must do something. What the tenant should have done is call their local council about the fault. If they can show that the landlord has been informed, and has refused to fix a fault, then the council can (and does*) issue an improvement notice on the landlord. If the landlord ignores that, then the council can (and does) deal with it - that can mean various things, including arranging a repair and billing the landlord, declaring the property unfit, and prosecuting the landlord**.

* One of the guys at work had this. His rented house was damp and mouldy and the landlord didn't fix it - the council issued an enforcement notice on her, and then it got fixed !

** There was a case not long ago when a landlord was fined over £20k for breaches of regulations - in that case relating to an HMO. It was pointed out by the prosecuting council after the case that the improvements needed (and which still had to be done before the property could be let again) would have cost a lot less than the fine.

So the tools already exist to deal with what most of us suspect are fairly uncommon events. If you are going to argue that that isn't enough, then what next - a mandatory inspection to check the condition of the sanitation, structural survey, checks for damp, and so the list goes on and on.

I feel a letter to my MP coming on.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Probably close to none, and the few that are would generally be blatantly obvious to anyone, such as broken fuseboxes, missing covers, sockets hanging off the wall etc.

If I could think of a way to search for it I could find at least 1 post here from a tenant reporting a problem as egregious as those where the landlord or agent (who had been sent the photos) was refusing to do anything without a report from an electrician.

So in reality, we're back to "Part P" statistics. Because "some small number" of tenants have a problem like that, then "all landlords" must do something.

What I meant was that it's no use relying on common-sense reactions to things which are blantantly obvious.

I am not a fan of the idea that all you have to do is to pass laws and everything wrong will thus get righted, or that the answer to any problems which have arisen from existing laws not being enforced is to pass another one.