Terminating unused electric cable

[JohnW2]

Who cares about the absence of a Completion Certificate?

People who find that no proof of compliance with the Building Regulations has made their property unsaleable, or has significantly devalued it.

As I've said many times, my experience is that such fears are very much exaggerated. I frequently see houses being sold for which there is no available evidence of Building Regs compliance for work which has clearly been done on them.

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

If you are going to apply that to a ruling on ...

I would apply it to any ruling by any Court about anything. If there were an "absolute guarantee" of what Court's ruling would be, the Court would not have to sit!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

As I've said many times, my experience is that such fears are very much exaggerated. I frequently see houses being sold for which there is no available evidence of Building Regs compliance for work which has clearly been done on them.

I imagine that the passing of time is important. No certificate for a loft conversion done last year is a bit different than none for one done 20 years ago.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I would apply it to any ruling by any Court about anything. If there were an "absolute guarantee" of what Court's ruling would be, the Court would not have to sit!

So in other words you do think that no self-certifying electrician may claim compliance with the Building Regulations because it's an absolute claim, not modified by any concept of reasonable skill and care, best of knowledge and belief. It is an unequivocal "it complies".

 

[stillp]

There you go again! It is not a generalisation, it is a fact. You have to consider the whole standard, not parts of it. The group of experts has decided that it is no longer adequate, perhaps because some of its provisions are too onerous, but that is irrelevant - it is not adequate.

Hmmm. If parts of it are considered 'inadequate' because they required a higher standard of safety than does the current edition, then I don't think anyone would be saying anything about those parts if/when they were trying to use BS7671-compliance as a means of complying with the requirement of Part P for work to be reasonably safe!

However, I don't understand why I'm being taken to task about this. As I keep saying, I would personally not ever refer to a superseded edition of BS7671 as a means of trying to demonstrate compliance with Part P - it was PBC who suggested that!

Kind Regards, John

NO! The group has not "decided that parts of it are inadequate". They have decided that the 'old' edition of the standard is inadequate!
It is a well-established legal principle that superseded editions of standards cannot be used to claim present-day conformity.

I agree, it was PBC's suggestion, but it is you who keeps banging on about 'parts of the standard'.

 

[PBC_1966]

PBC, you seem to be missing the point about supersession. The fact that a standard has been superseded means that a group of experts has decided it is no longer adequate. By implication, a new installation to the superseded standard is also inadequate.

Inadequate in what way? The point of debate here is whether the installation meets the sole legal requirement of Part P of the Building Regulations, i.e. that it is reasonably safe. Does something which just about everybody considers reasonably safe today suddenly become unsafe tomorrow just because a new edition of some standard has been published?

Firstly, you seem to be assuming that changes in Standards/regulations are always in the same direction - that of 'tightening', whereas, certainly in the case of BS7671, there have been 'relaxations'. Hence, in relation to some matters, the superseded standard is not "inadequate" but, rather "more than adequate"!

Indeed - As I've learned just recently with, for example, spur rules on rings being relegated from absolutes to mere guidance and recommendations.

Secondly, and I think that this is the main point PBC is making, in order to demonstrate compliance with Part P, one 'merely' has to present a reasoned argument (based on whatever) that one has made "reasonable provision for safety" etc., regardless of the views of any one particular group of experts at any particular point in time. If the legislators had wanted to make compliance with (the current edition of) BS7671 mandatory, they could have done - but (perhaps at least partially for reasons we have discussed) they chose not to do that.

Precisely. If those drafting Part P had intended that it be interpreted that any work should always be done in full compliance with the whatever the current edition of BS7671 may be, then why did they not say so explicitly?

For a somewhat analogous situation, look at the Motor Vehicles Construction & Use Regulations. Very occasionally there have been changes which require all existing vehicles to have something changed or added for them to continue to be considered legally roadworthy. Those things are stated quite explicitly. By far the majority of the time, amendments to the regulations stipulate that a certain device must be fitted to new vehicles from a certain date, but those requirements do not render existing vehicles without whatever it is legally unroadworthy. ·

Isn't this what many of the changes in BS7671 are saying, in effect? Do this from now on for increased safety, but don't consider existing wiring without it to be unsafe in any way.

Compliance with a standard demands compliance with all its normative provisions. You cannot cherry-pick and claim that some parts are more or less stringent than parts of another standard.

But is this case there is no legal requirement to comply with the standard as a whole - Only that the installation be reasonably safe, however one wishes to define that.

I'm not proposing to cherry pick. Nor am I proposing to refer to a superseded edition of a Standard (that was PBC, not me, who suggested that - I suspect somewhat tongue-in-cheek).

Indeed, and hypothetically too, since I wouldn't have ever done such a thing.

Why would you want to?

Simple - you are doing the electrical work for an extension, or a loft conversion etc, and you tell them that you intend to comply with Part P by complying with BS 7671:2001. They say "No, that won't do". So you take them to court because you don't want to comply with :2008 and you believe that they are acting unlawfully by refusing to accept :2001.

But as I said before, speaking for myself I wouldn't have been involving them in such a thing in the first place, so it's all hypothetical.

Who cares about the absence of a Completion Certificate?

As I said, if they want to pursue the matter, through the Courts or whatever, that's up to them.

Precisely. If one were worried about it that much, they couldn't "do" you for failure to notify that way, not that I ever heard of such a case based purely upon non-notification (only where in combination with extremely dangerous work).

As I've said many times, my experience is that such fears are very much exaggerated. I frequently see houses being sold for which there is no available evidence of Building Regs compliance for work which has clearly been done on them.

Indeed. A potential buyer can always get a survey done if he's that worried about it. Or when it comes time to sell, the person who had the non-certified work carried out could pay for one so as to provide prospective buyers with some reassurance.

The same goes on here, by the way. Before settling on our present house, my wife and I looked at many homes which had all sorts of work done on them without a building permit, in some cases extensions of up to about 500 sq. ft. It's not a big deal (and in fact here it could be financially beneficial, since the county won't have a record of some addition in order to increase property taxes!).

 

[stillp]

Compliance with a standard demands compliance with all its normative provisions. You cannot cherry-pick and claim that some parts are more or less stringent than parts of another standard.

But is this case there is no legal requirement to comply with the standard as a whole - Only that the installation be reasonably safe, however one wishes to define that.

Yes, you're right about the legal requirement. However I was pointing out that if you choose to demonstrate that you had achieved the requirement to be "reasonably safe" by using an obsolete standard, that would likely not be accepted by a court, or by a regulator such as HSE, whether or not you thought that some of the provisions of the obsolete standard were more onerous/safer than the current edition.

 

[PBC_1966]

However I was pointing out that if you choose to demonstrate that you had achieved the requirement to be "reasonably safe" by using an obsolete standard, that would likely not be accepted by a court, or by a regulator such as HSE, whether or not you thought that some of the provisions of the obsolete standard were more onerous/safer than the current edition.

Surely - and I think this is the point John is making as well - the court should not be looking merely at whether some standard has been superseded or not, but on what the law demands, i.e. is the work reasonably safe? And the onus would be on the prosecution to demonstrate that it is not, regardless of which version of the standard (or no particular standard at all) was followed.

 

[stillp]

Exactly, so referring to an obsolete standard would not be a viable defence.

 

[PBC_1966]

So are you saying that in your opinion work which satisfied all the requirements of BS7671 as it stood in 2007 is not reasonably safe?

 

[JohnW2]

Surely - and I think this is the point John is making as well - the court should not be looking merely at whether some standard has been superseded or not, but on what the law demands, i.e. is the work reasonably safe? And the onus would be on the prosecution to demonstrate that it is not, regardless of which version of the standard (or no particular standard at all) was followed.

Indeed so - and, since we would be talking about a criminal court, the prosecution would have to somehow prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that the work was not "reasonably safe". I suspect that probably means that, in relation to the sort of fairly 'minor' issue we are talking about, they would be hard-pressed to get a conviction even if no defence was offered!

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

Exactly, so referring to an obsolete standard would not be a viable defence.

AS I've just written, the onus would be on the prosecution to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that the work was not reasonably safe, even in the absence of any defence.

Kind Regards, John

 

[stillp]

So are you saying that in your opinion work which satisfied all the requirements of BS7671 as it stood in 2007 is not reasonably safe?

No.

 

[JohnW2]

So are you saying that in your opinion work which satisfied all the requirements of BS7671 as it stood in 2007 is not reasonably safe?

No.

I'm getting a bit confused. ... so how do you think that a prosecutor could convince a Court that, beyond reasonable doubt, it was not reasonably safe?

Kind Regards, John

 

[stillp]

I'm getting a bit confused

Yes, I think you are!
I'm taking about the inadmissibility of a defence.