Part P - Elecrtics Help - Please!

[chapeau]

so the only way to force LABC to follow this would be to take them to court and win the case, thus establishing case law in this area.

The problem is that you would probably have to do this in the magistrates court which is not ideal because

1) Magistrates don't have a clue and are likely to side with the authority instead of the individual because that's how they tend to work.

2) 'The Powers That Be' know magistrates don't have a clue so don't allow their decisions to set a precedent

 

[1john]

if the electrician is neat tidy and you have no doubts about him then why do you state that you WONT have him back to issue a certificate.

You do not need to be part of a competent persons scheme to issue a certificate.

The fella, if qualified will have test equipment, or be able to use some from somewhere as if he really is a practicing electrician doing his own jobs he will be needing it for all the other jobs he does.

the other things he will need are a current copy of BS7671 and a photo copier. As before, if he really is a practicing electrician doing his own jobs he will have a copy of BS7671, so he needs to speculate 50p of photocopies of the Electrical Installation Certificate contained within BS7671.

I'm sorry to say that you have tried to cheat the system, dramatically failed, probibally not saved any money, it will probibally cost you more in the long run, look at all the greif so far and it's still not signed off, if you cant resolve the issue there may be problems when selling your home, there is a possibility (not known it hapen though) of a fine upto £5000, your work is untested and therefore must be deemed unsafe, it shouldnt have even been energised without testing it.

If you had looked online prior to the work, then only an idiot would deem it cost effective to do a small job like replace a consumer unit without using the 'competent persons scheme'.

You paid £120 to inform the LABC of your work, i pay £1.50. You paid the LABC 4 hours of a competent approoved electricians costs to do 10 mins of looking and you have got nothing.

I would love to see the install, I would also love to know the out come, i would mainly really really really love to know all the costs involved with taking the cheapest route.

You need to get this guy back to issue the certificate, another electrician cant sign off someone elses work as their own, for obvious reasons.

 

[DCC]

Despite BAS's rather holier than thou declarations blaming the OP for not researching the issue to the Nth degree what is clear here is that the SYSTEM is at fault. The consumer cannot be expected, and should not be expected, to understand all the legalities, standards and processes involved, most do not have the time and many do not have the brainpower. This is (another) clear failure on the part of the rulemakers to create a working, simple system.

If the only sensible and reliable way for an average consumer to get the required paperwork is to use a suitably registered installer then only suitably registered/qualified installers should be allowed, by law, to undertake domestic electrical work. Full stop, end of story - if that means every sparks has to pay to join a scheme then so what? the costs will just be passed to the customer, the playing field will be level and much more importantly - crap like this will stop happening.

If we need a DIY route then a proper system without these glaring loopholes is required.

One thing is abundantly clear, the "electrician" who undertook this work has not provided an acceptable service to the customer. I wonder if a small claims court would be the correct route to recover for the costs of getting the required remedial work done and paperwork in place.

 

[DCC]

I'm sorry to say that you have tried to cheat the system

If you actually read the thread it's quite clear that there was no intent to cheat the system, the OP notified the council believing they would inspect and test. He used a supposedly qualified electrician who then turned out not to be able to test or issue an EIC, then finds he's screwed over because both the council and the electrician are not doing what they are obliged to do.

Yes, in hindsight he was probably a bit stupid thinking that this supposedly cheaper route would work but accusing him of "cheating the system" is a bit OTT.

 

[Paul_C]

If you actually read the thread it's quite clear that there was no intent to cheat the system, the OP notified the council believing they would inspect and test. He used a supposedly qualified electrician who then turned out not to be able to test or issue an EIC, then finds he's screwed over because both the council and the electrician are not doing what they are obliged to do.

Indeed, I don't see any intent to cheat the system at all (not that cheating a completely corrupt and ineffective system is exactly crime of the century anyway). He is now stuck between a rock and a hard place by having tried to follow the regulations which are being ignored by everyone else.

 

[dingbat]

The fella, if qualified will have test equipment, or be able to use some from somewhere as if he really is a practicing electrician doing his own jobs he will be needing it for all the other jobs he does.

Sadly not so. Plenty of 'qualified electricians' have no idea how to use test equipment.

...if he really is a practicing electrician doing his own jobs he will have a copy of BS7671...

Again, not necessarily so. In fact, many who call themselves, 'qualified electricians', will never have possessed a regs book, or never have actually consulted the one they barely used in college, years ago.

In an industry (construction) with a very large number of independently changing regulations it is rare, indeed, to find any practitioner who understands all of them (I certainly don't claim to.)

Sadly, the vast majority of electricians are ignorant of even the regulations which apply to their own work, let alone all the ancillary stuff affected by it. This, I believe, will not change, but at least going with a registered spark you may have some redress if it all goes 'toes' up.

 

[smoothcrm]

if the electrician is neat tidy and you have no doubts about him then why do you state that you WONT have him back to issue a certificate.

As I said the whole point of all this thread is the chap I picked to do the job couldn’t issue a cert at the time so nothings has changed since ! I just didn’t know that when I stupidly picked him!
Plus as you all have mentioned there issues to why he can’t test, hence there is no point in me continuing the problems by forcing him to do it or dealing with him again !

I'm sorry to say that you have tried to cheat the system, dramatically failed, probibally not saved any money, it will probibally cost you more in the long run, look at all the greif so far and it's still not signed off,

probibally is spelt probably BTW

And yes you are completely our of order and completely wrong !
I haven’t dramatically failed - I have been failed ! by the sparky and the council.

If I were cheating the system, I would have done it myself and not told a sole, I could have then lied if/when I choose to sell my house or blamed the previous owner or anything similar - No money spent ! so please, think about your response before your open your keyboard !

You paid £120 to inform the LABC of your work, i pay £1.50. You paid the LABC 4 hours of a competent approved electricians costs to do 10 mins of looking and you have got nothing.

However, you are sort of correct here though - I paid 120 pound, as I was advised / told to by the council and got very little for it!!! If the council were good honest chaps then they may have advised me to use a person registered under a compt person scheme and it would probably cost me less in the long run. Do you really think they were like that and I chose to ignore them? NO not at all - they told me I had to give them money to do what I wanted, so I did ! As I believed they would cover the testing part of things anyway – but it appears I paid them to have a quick look around my house twice ; - ) !

I may not in the future though !

DCC , Paul C, Dingbat
Thank you for reading the posts correctly and your understanding !

 

[martinxxxxxx]

probibally is spelt probably BTW

If I were cheating the system, I would have done it myself and not told a sole,

Sounds Fishy

 

[DCC]

I think you're floundering now

 

[martinxxxxxx]

Is the OP in Dover I wonder?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

If I were cheating the system, I would have done it myself and not told a sole,

Sole is spelt soul, BTW.

I could have then lied if/when I choose to sell my house or blamed the previous owner or anything similar

Yup, if you want to turn a Building Regulations problem into fraud...

Anyway - I wasn't really ranting, I just found it hard to believe that you did look into what trade associations were relevant to electrical work, and what they said about it, or that you didn't just take the cheapest quote, and I found it very hard to believe that someone who knew nothing about electrical work would see that his council told him get an electrician who could issue a BS 7671 certificate, and despite not knowing what that was would just assume without asking that any electrician would be able to do this thing that he knew nothing about.

If the council were good honest chaps then they may have advised me to use a person registered under a compt person scheme

They did, and they would have told you that you didn't need to pay them anything if you did that.

Did you stop to wonder why the quotes from registered electricians were the most expensive by far? If the difference was a lot more than your £120 notification fee did no alarm bells start ringing, causing you to think that there might be reasons why the guy you chose was so cheap?

As I believed they would cover the testing part of things anyway – but it appears I paid them to have a quick look around my house twice ; - ) !

Well we'll never know, as we only have your précis of what their website told you.

 

[Paul_C]

It's not just Part P. Self-certification schemes exist for a wide range of building work. As the building regulations have become more complex, building inspectors rarely have the expertise to carry out all the inspection work necessary, especially for technical services. And this trend will continue as more and more aspects of buildings become subject to increasing technical difficulty and regulation.

Although you have an option to carry out notifiable work via the building control route this places a burden on the inspection staff that is beyond their ability to cope. The LABCs cannot cope - if you asked them, most would prefer you give the work to a company registered to self-certify.

It's not surprising then, that many LABCs opt to make notifying DIY/unregistered work either expensive or complicated or both.

I don't disagree with what you say or your reasoning, but as far as I'm concerned that's the LABC's problem. Explain to your local council that you don't have the resources to pay the ever-increasing council tax they demand and they'll tell you, effectively, "Too bad, those are the rules, it's your problem to find the money." Try telling your local council that as a frail 80-year-old you can't cope with dragging a wheelie bin 400 yards to a collection point to meet their arbitrary collection rules, and they'll also claim that's not their problem.

So while agreeing that they may not have the staff to cope (and it's pretty obvious from various reports that council building inspectors mostly know practically nothing about electrical matters), I don't have any sympathy with them trying to bully and intimidate people into doing things by claiming "those are our rules" when they have no authority to enforce those rules. Especially when they are charging extortionate amounts of money for doing so.

In other words, given the local councils' general attitude to residents these days, I see no reason why when they claim they can't cope we shouldn't just say "That's your problem, now follow the rules."

If they don't have the staff to cope, they should use the services of a third party for the inspections and pay that third party from the fee they demand. That's what it's there for, supposedly.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

So what do you suggest people should do about it, generally, and smoothcrm particularly?

 

[Paul_C]

As far as I'm concerned the best thing is not to get the bureaucrats involved in the first place if you can avoid it. I certainly would not be paying them £100-plus just to install a new circuit to a few sockets in my own home.

Unfortunately, as in this case, once they are involved and refuse to abide by the same set of rules they are so insistent that you follow, you're up the proverbial creek and it seems you have three options:

1. If you don't need their certificate for anything, forget about it and remember not to get them involved next time.

2. Take them to court.

3. If you have the time and inclination, keep making enough of a stink until somebody in the LABC realizes that he will have to follow through. Phone calls every day demanding your certificate, etc.

What else can be done?