Maybe it is because I went down the road of getting a completion certificate that I am not worried about getting one. I did all the inspecting and testing, and I submitted the certificate to the LABC, without visiting the house, they in turn issued a completion certificate. All the certificate says is the LABC inspector trusted me. It does not in any way shape or form show the house is safe.
Pay for an EICR yes, employ people who can issue an installation certificate yes, but both the completion and compliance certificates just say some one trusts the electrician doing the work. Some one has decided the electrician has the skill and equipment to do a good job, that does not mean he has done a good job, just he has the ability to do a good job.
I would agree that an EICR can miss faults, but so can an installation certificate, if a plaster after the cables have been installed and tested puts a fixing through the cable, which causes the metal in the stud wall to become live, and if the plumber fails to fix the over flow tun dish correctly, and if the system over heats and water cascades onto the metal in the stud wall, then
Emma Shaw may be electrocuted. We are lucky today the RCD would likely trip before anyone touches the water which it seems was live. And in that case the person doing the tests actually fudged up the test results when he could not get the reading expected, instead of telling his boss there was a problem. The court it seems took the attitude that the guy testing was thick and did not realise what he had done was wrong, and his boss took the can for asking him to do work, which he was not trained to do. Personally I feel asking a guy to plug in a machine and record the reading is a reasonable request, all he had to do was enter the reading he had got rather than make up some fictitious result made up by the lads in the tea cabin.
However the case shows how even an installation certificate does not show the property is safe, and all Part P did was to register that an installation certificate had been issued, and would not have stopped the death. What changed was BS7671 which in 2001 and even in 2004 with amendment 2 did not require the RCD protection required when BS7671:2008 came into force. That was nothing to do with Part P. All Part P did was to require electricians working on domestic properties to pass on some of their hard earned cash to either the local authority or to some scheme operator who in theroy should check a section of the work to ensure it complied, had the LABC selected just one socket and tested the RCD and loop impedance and checked the results matched the installation certificate then OK they will likely catch out the rouge trader. But they did not even visit to have a quick look around, they just posted the completion certificate. So tell me how does the issue of a completion certificate show the installation is OK?
). However, that does not alter my views about what should, and should not, be said or written 'in public'.
