But as the law regarding making reasonable provision for safety makes no reference to BS7671, why should anybody merely reading the law to understand what his legal obligations are have any reason to believe that what the law would require does actually change when some standard the law does not refer to changes?
The Building Regulations are full of requirements which are not prescribed solutions. If a person is not competent enough to know what to do then he has to do more research, or engage a professional.
The standard set out by BS7671, yes (with possible exemptions, as noted already). That is not necessarily the legal standard of "reasonable provision for safety."
Whilst compliance with BS 7671 is not formally required, that
is the British Standard which relates to electrical installations, and to
deliberately refuse to implement a requirement of it which is intimately related to personal safety but instead to do something which the standard no longer regards as
safe enough to be continued to be done is not reasonable.
Unless using the exemption for a socket intended for a specific piece of equipment and so labeled, I've never claimed that adding a socket without RCD protection would not be non-compliant with the regulations in today's version of BS7671. What I dispute is your claim that such makes it illegal
You could dispute that the world is round - it would not make it flat.
Of course it makes it illegal, because although compliance with BS 7671 is not formally required, that
is the British Standard which relates to electrical installations, and to
deliberately refuse to implement a requirement of it which is intimately related to personal safety but instead to do something which the standard no longer regards as
safe enough to be continued to be done is not
reasonable.
(and that anybody doing it is immoral, indecent,etc.).
Feel free to either show where I have said that or to fail to show it and have that comment chalked up as yet another example of you being wrong. Again.
So when the committee responsible for the regulations says that non-RCD sockets do not warrant a code which indicates they are not reasonably safe (merely "improvement recommended"), they are judging that based on today's standard of what they consider to be reasonably safe.
Are you truly not familiar with the well established, widely encountered principle that when things change, and what was considered OK to be newly done yesterday is no longer considered OK to be newly done today, what was considered OK to be newly done yesterday is not required to be updated or removed and replaced today, it just has to be no longer newly done?
If they say "
this should be improved", what makes it reasonable to deliberately install something which they say you must not install and which immediately should be improved?
If every time something in BS7671 changed to impose stricter requirements the committee felt that it made the previous standard no longer reasonably safe, then there would be no need for the C3 code on an inspection (or the code 4 under the previous system), since everything non-compliant with the new version would have to be considered unsafe and thus get some sort of danger code.
Are you truly not familiar with the well established, widely encountered principle that when things change, and what was considered OK to be newly done yesterday is no longer considered OK to be newly done today, what was considered OK to be newly done yesterday is not required to be updated or removed and replaced today, it just has to be no longer newly done?
I'll make you an offer:
I will stop telling you that there is a difference between assessing what is already installed and installing something new shortly after you stop pretending that there isn't.
I thought it was a simple enough question based upon your earlier comments.
You need to get better at thinking.
How simple can we make this?
And you need to come to realise that not everybody fails to see the difference between "simple" and "simplistic.
"Mr. Sheds, I'd like you to inspect and test the electrical installation in my house and tell me if, in your opinion, it is reasonably safe."
You find sockets in the living rooms, bedrooms, etc. which are not RCD protected, ditto for buried cables, in fact a standard sort of installation on a TN-S or TN-C-S system of a few years ago. Nothing else is in any way questionable.
What will your verdict be?
My opinion is that it is not reasonably safe.