To inform them that they are employing cowboy electricians, since it is them who are responsible for said sub contractors work and that they are signing off on dangerous installations and leaving them in an unfit state.
Found this at home today!
- Thread starter bhm1712
- Start date
To inform them that they are employing cowboy electricians, since it is them who are responsible for said sub contractors work and that they are signing off on dangerous installations and leaving them in an unfit state.
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Seen worse
Hence why self certification schemes are absolute ******. It's just a cop out for Cowboys because nothing will ever get done.
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OK, since we agree that the schemes are rubbish and really just a nice little earner for the few outfits who effectively have a captive audience ...
Is there anywhere where people can report having made a complaint but nothing happened ? Because otherwise there's no statistics to show they aren't doing the job and nothing will improve.
At least Gas Safe will come and look at things (sometimes) - not that it stops gas fitters doing more dangerous sh*t. Like using a bit of flue liner where twin-wall flue pipe should have been used(1), or fitting a new gas fire without spotting said flue liner(2), or replacing said flue liner with proper twin-wall but putting the pipes upside down and not fixing it properly(3) so it fell off and dumped the POCs into the loft(4). (1), (2), and (3) were 3 different and unconnected Corgi/Gas Safe registered engineers working in just one property - (1) was when it was built, (2) was just a few years before I bought it (there was paperwork for it), and (3) was when I bought it and a safety inspection spotted it, (4) happened after about 3 years and was also spotted during a safety inspection.
Is there anywhere where people can report having made a complaint but nothing happened ? Because otherwise there's no statistics to show they aren't doing the job and nothing will improve.
At least Gas Safe will come and look at things (sometimes) - not that it stops gas fitters doing more dangerous sh*t. Like using a bit of flue liner where twin-wall flue pipe should have been used(1), or fitting a new gas fire without spotting said flue liner(2), or replacing said flue liner with proper twin-wall but putting the pipes upside down and not fixing it properly(3) so it fell off and dumped the POCs into the loft(4). (1), (2), and (3) were 3 different and unconnected Corgi/Gas Safe registered engineers working in just one property - (1) was when it was built, (2) was just a few years before I bought it (there was paperwork for it), and (3) was when I bought it and a safety inspection spotted it, (4) happened after about 3 years and was also spotted during a safety inspection.
If we did nothing about the likelihood of anything being done, but made the penalties that would be imposed just if something was done so hideous that the cowboy's life would effectively be over, that might help.
Basically what you are proposing is a system where (just making up numbers) people get away with a million "offences" and we don't bother trying to catch them. So to compensate, we'll make the penalties a million times harsher - so the one in a million that does get caught is penalised for the other 999,999 offences that don't get caught.
Or put another way, we're going to make a scapegoat out of a few and make them pay the penalties for others' faults.
Lets go the whole hog and re-introduce (in the original sense of the word) decimation. Lets line up 100 of the local leckys and decimate them - even though the chances of any of them actually being responsible would be quite slim - I suppose that would have them asking for their trade body to take action
Or put another way, we're going to make a scapegoat out of a few and make them pay the penalties for others' faults.
Lets go the whole hog and re-introduce (in the original sense of the word) decimation. Lets line up 100 of the local leckys and decimate them - even though the chances of any of them actually being responsible would be quite slim - I suppose that would have them asking for their trade body to take action
It's not a case of not bothering - it is simple reality that we cannot catch all of them, and therefore the deterrent effect of having punishment for transgressors is diminished.
Harsher penalties would improve the effectiveness,
If, currently, people 'get away with a million "offences"' then we still have the situation where the one in a million that does get caught is penalised and the other 999,999 that don't get caught don't get penalised.
In the current situation, the one in a million who does get caught is not penalised for the other 999,999 offenders that don't get caught, he is penalised for what he has done.
In the current situation, the one in a million who does get caught is not made a scapegoat and made to pay the penalties for others' faults, he is made to pay the penalty for what he has done.
FGS - where have I suggested that people should be penalised without exactly the same legal processes which we currently have?Lets go the whole hog and re-introduce (in the original sense of the word) decimation. Lets line up 100 of the local leckys and decimate them - even though the chances of any of them actually being responsible would be quite slim - I suppose that would have them asking for their trade body to take action
Quite frankly, Simon, if that post was an example of your ability to read and reason then I suggest you take up something more in line with your intellectual abilities - joining in discussions here is something you are nowhere near capable of doing properly.
No, that's not how deterrence works.
What is the maximum penalty for murder in Texas? Death
What is the maximum penalty for sharing needles in Glasgow? Death
What is the maximum penalty for smoking in the UK? Death
You can't get harsher.
What's the penalty for parking on double yellows in Oxford Street? You get towed away within minutes.
What deters people is the certainty of being caught, and the immediacy of personal effects.
People don't care about "it might not happen to you, and if it does, it won't be for years"
Walk down Oxford Street and you will see thousands of people smoking, but not a single parked car. The harshness of the penalty - dying slowly, in agony, racked with pain and gasping for breath while your family watch your unbearable slow decline, unable to help - does not deter the smokers.
But drivers know their car will be gone within minutes, and they will have to do without it for the rest of the day. Even multibillionaires to whom a fine means nothing don't let their chauffeurs do it.
BAS - just go back to reading your Daily Fail. When you can comprehend what people are saying then we can have a conversation. Don't bother with more arguments about it - you've failed to comprehend what I've written, just stop lecturing others because of your own lack of cognitive abilities.
The bottom line seems to be that the "schemes" will not take action against thier members whose work does not meet the required standard. The "schemes" seem to act only when the results of poor / negligent work results in criminal or civil action against their member and it can no longer be brushed under the carpet.
But what can the "schemes" do to their member who fails to meet the standards required without it becoming public knowledge ? Cancel his or her membership. That reduces the financial income tothe "scheme". Tell him or her to improve standards ? If they are already getting away with bad workmanship they will continue to do so unless well supervised.
But what can the "schemes" do to their member who fails to meet the standards required without it becoming public knowledge ? Cancel his or her membership. That reduces the financial income tothe "scheme". Tell him or her to improve standards ? If they are already getting away with bad workmanship they will continue to do so unless well supervised.
In reality, that is ALL they can do. But what they SHOULD be doing is throwing people out and making a big thing of it - as in sending the public message that "we police standards and we will throw out bad apples".
EDIT: That's a message both to their members "do it right or be out", and to the public to counteract that even people within the trade (and I assume members of the schemes) are publicly saying they are "rubbish".
Which pretty well sums it up - it's little to do with standards or safety, but about having a nice little "protection racket". Protection racket ? Well effectively the message is "pay us the membership tax or find your business 'very uncompetitive'". Where I live minor lecky works cost £150 to notify, I gather in some places it's up to £400 - that's a hell of a financial disadvantage compared to adding £12 (or whatever it is) onto a job to self notify.
Exactly. And the evidence is there that the schemes are not adequately supervising members.
Now if they really wanted to be seen to be supervising members, they'd accept a report of a job like this. OK, someone may have fiddled with it afterwards, but why not look through their records and make visits to look at other work they've done - either around the same time, or recently, or both ?
Given what I know now about how lax they really are, if it weren't for the membership fees which would make it uneconomic, there'd be a temptation to see if I could get in just to avoid BC notification fees (especially if the BC rules hadn't been relaxed in 2013). As it is, when I put the new CU in (already notified) I'll be making sure to add all the circuits I could possibly want in the future - even if they only have one light or one socket on them
But, there is another angle to this ...
There's an old saying "be careful what you wish for". The schemes are "poor", but not worthless. If we were to make too much of a fuss, what might the result be ? Could the result of government intervention be worse than what we have now ? I think it's fairly widely agreed that the 2005 BR notification requirements caused a lot of work to "go underground" - and once you're in a position where you know you can't admit in public what you're doing, then it's a lot harder to ask for help. Thus something which we might advise someone not to do now, but if they insist on going ahead we would try as best we can to help them do it safely - they might just do on their own without any of that advice, and with a worse outcome. Plus we know that some fraudsters (including the schemes) misrepresented "Part P" - with a result that we strongly suspect some beneficial works didn't get done (eg, instead of adding an extra socket, leave an extension lead under the carpet across a doorway).
The whole point of the schemes is to (apparently) ensure that work is done correctly and safely - by having somebody who is competent do the work for you.
What some of these electricians are doing and there is another post on here which shows another bodge job which has been ignored by those in positions of responsibility (the cables installed outside of safe zones and still visible after plastering and at skirting board level) means that the installation is just as dangerous as if somebody incompetent had carried out the work.
So I still can't see the point of any of these schemes.
I tend to agree with ban all sheds here. Make the fine for incompetent and dangerous work extremely high and a ban from working with electricals professionally ever again. Yes people will still abuse it and some will get away with it, but for those who get caught their careers are over and their lives ruined. Word soon spreads and people will think twice.
What some of these electricians are doing and there is another post on here which shows another bodge job which has been ignored by those in positions of responsibility (the cables installed outside of safe zones and still visible after plastering and at skirting board level) means that the installation is just as dangerous as if somebody incompetent had carried out the work.
So I still can't see the point of any of these schemes.
I tend to agree with ban all sheds here. Make the fine for incompetent and dangerous work extremely high and a ban from working with electricals professionally ever again. Yes people will still abuse it and some will get away with it, but for those who get caught their careers are over and their lives ruined. Word soon spreads and people will think twice.
They were thought to be a good idea only by those who thought something needed doing.
Now, of course, the requirements of notification have been watered down so much (in England) that the system is virtually pointless.
Nonsense.
A harsh penalty.
In an ideal world.
If you find one, feel free to emigrate there, but in the meantime, in this one, we will also have to rely on harshness of penalties to form part of deterrence.
Indeed not.
So if the certainty was a fine within minutes, it would not be a deterrent to them. What is a deterrent is the penalty, not the certainty or the immediacy.
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