It depends on what your focus is. If you are a landlord, i think you would have a duty of care to your tenants to ensure that all reasonable practicable steps had been taken to ensure their safety, but that change would not be immediatley required. It may only become relevant on the next inspection, which could be as long as 5 years away.
Wouldn't that be even sillier? If one were taking the view that, because of new requirements of the regs, changes/'improvements' needed to be made 'in the name of safety', what would be the justification for allowing those changes to be delayed by, say, 5 years?
Silly? I wouldn't have described it that way myself, but that may be the case. Nevertheless, it could be a reality, couldn't it?
Similar to having your car MOTd on Jan 1st and some change was made to the MOT test on Jan 2nd that would mean your car under the new regime would be considered a fail. That doesn't mean your car is unsafe to use on the road, so no immediate need to have work done, but come december 31st, you would be forced into having the work done by then should you wish to continue using the car legally.
Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were suggesting that (per your analogy), if changes to the MOT test on 31st December had the effect that your car technically 'failed' a test on Jan 1st, you would be allowed to delay the rectifications until the following Dec 31st.
However, even now that I understood what you meant, there still is an element of what I would call 'silliness' in it - since there is a substantial random element in the equation. Work required to bring an installation up to current standards 'in the name of safety' might have to be undertaken almost immediately, or not for 5 or more years, depending on the purely chance matter of when the regulations changed in relation to an installation's 'EICR cycle'.
I really don't believe that I am ever going to see regulations automatically requiring that electrical installations be brought up to current regulations as they evolve. However, if, despite my belief, such a thing ever did happen, I think the system would be well-advised to point its fingers first at the DNOs!
...the introduction of the 17th ed itself in 2008 would have caused a high proportion of installations to need significant works - in most cases including a CU change (or serious butchery to an existing CU,or installation of an extra CU).
True, but was that such a bad thing? I dare say it provoked a lot of people to improving the overall safety of their installation
In many cases, I don't think it will have had an appreciable effect on the safety of the installation. By 2008, many people had an installation in which all circuits were protected by a single RCD (I certainly did from the mid-80s, maybe earlier). For many people, therefore, 'upgrading to comply with current regs' required them to move to a 2-RCD CU. That will have have provided a slight 'convenience' benefit ('slight', because how often do RCDs operate? - in my house, I can recall only two or three times in the last couple of decades, all in daylight) but I suspect that the 'improvement in overall safety' (people not falling down the stairs in the dark,etc.) would probably be almost immeasurable.
what about them? Were inaccessible junction boxes ever compliant?
They have been so ubiquitous that I assumed they probably had been. If not, there were not many compliant installations in the past!
Are there any class1 fittings attached to said lighting circuit?.. etc..
Whilst that is an important question in relation to safety in the presence of a lighting circuit without a CPC (i.e. common sense), I don't think that a lighting circuit without a CPC can be compliant with current regulations,no matter what fittings there are - since there is a requirement for a CPC to be run to every 'point and accessory' in a circuit. Hence, 2-core lighting circuits are non-compliant with current regs, although (by applying common sense) you can advise people how to use them safely if they have them.
Kind Regards, John
