Yes, I know this is old, but as it is flagged by the site as relevant to a current thread, it's important that it be updated.
Yes indeed, whether a thread is old or relatively new it is no bad thing to update accordingly if it improves current understanding.
Just to mention my take of some of it redf Third Party Certification.
From day 1 of Part P (love it or loathe it) I was registered from Jan 1st 2005 via ELECSA who were against the third party route and I can see their objections and admit they do have a point and I agree (to some extent) with some of those objections.
I jumped ship for the last three years of my working life to STROMA, practially because they were cheaper and not in any respect because I thought ill of ELECSA, it was a business decision to cut costs as I was pretty much a one man band (I occasionally subcontracted to trusted fellows in order to allow them to work alongside me or very rarely to cover my absence at holiday times etc which meant I had to supply those details to HMRC too).
When STROMA then allowed the third party route I then enquired what it required in addition to my normal registration and realised it was a bit more than a tick box excersize but added liabillity insurance cover which in itself along (there were a few additional technicalities toobut not too costly or inconvenient in themselves.
It was the costs of the additional insurance that made me decide not to add it as another string to my bow mainly, along with the expectation of some fellows I knew that were expecting me to cut corners with proper procedure.
Too much hassle really both in fincancial costs compared to what I might gain and the over realistic expectations of others.
When I checked I realised that extremely few of the STROMA registered had added third party inspections to their registration too - maybe for reasons similar to my own.
I wonder if any of you remember the original line up of the schemes available?
FENSA (for windows) had been going a while so had all the notification practicalities sorted out and the "gave birth" to ELECSA.
BSA were around twice the price of all the other schemes and allowed some use of their "Kitemark" as an incentive.
NAPIT were "the new kids on the block" because they came very late on compared to the others and very few in the trade had heard of them at the time initially.
I have happy memories of my time with the assesors at ELECSA and highly recommended them, STROMA were cheaper and the assessor was "OK" a nice chap but I did argue with him when he asked his first question "What comes under Part P?" .
One of the reps of STROMA though was a great bloke who was/is a very respected chap of the IET and is often involved at the seminars at ELEX shows, I consider him one of the "Uncles" on the IET forum too.
Having sat through a talk by a rep from one of the trade bodies to a non-technical group, I found it hard resisting the temptation to call him on his many lies... err misleading statements about what does and doesn't need one of their members by law.
