Originally Posted by Ruffy

The authorities seem to be good at making money out of it though, especially wrt. testing. No money made - this is a self financing part of a council required by law to cover its costs through charges (individually there will be swings and roundabouts), it does NOT receive any external funding from Council tax or any other source, and because for many councils the number of applications submitted for this type of work is few it isn't cost effective to have electrical specialists in house as such. It can easily cost £350 for tests to be undertaken by a contractor hence the fees have to cover this. It isn't the council's choice, that's the way the legislation was set up - Sadly in some cases the cost of control is more than the actual value of installation work! I hasten to add very much against what Councils wanted and argues strongly against.

Whilst I agree in general about electrical safety, to my knowledge one of the main causes of fires resulting from poor electrical installation is poor/loose wire termination and yet changing socket tops & light switches etc. is exempt from Part P. Big Anomaly IMHO! I'm sure Councils very much agree with this, but again they didn't set the rules. Part P was introduced very messily, it was revised within just a year of its introduction.

Unfortunately, Part P is a big divider of opinion in the electrical community and there is many a rant/debate on the IET Wiring Regs forum (see www.theiet.org/forums ). I am in the camp that believes that Part P has just added cost for the majority of competent, small-scale installers and created "jobs for the boys". I happen to be a professional Electrical Engineer in the power field and have some installation competency from earlier jobs but, now that my career has moved on, my authorisations and certified qualifications do not cover Part P so I effectively can't work in my own home or help out my relatives: We either have to employ someone else who can self certify to do the job, pay the local authority or work illegally. I'm actually looking at C&G courses off my own back just so that I can get the right certification to back it all up in the eyes of the Local Authority. On top of that I'll now have to pay for regular third party certification of the calibration of my test instruments. It isn't a cheap process! End of my rant. There is a huge amount of empathy from Council's on this. I know of chap near me in his 60's carrying out safe (as far as I know) installations all his working career but no formal qualifications to find all of sudden he can't get work. Unfortunately it happens in lots of skilled jobs these days. I can remeber when the simple O Level counted for something.

Originally Posted by tigersaw

I'm not sure how all of this affects or should worry the average joe though. I bought this house a year ago, and got a sparky in because the leccy kept tripping. Oddly the fridge stayed on. The fridge turned out to have its own supply bypassing the fuses, so this was not a new problem. The cause of the tripping was the garden wiring - normal twin/earth into choc blocks taped and buried. All was ripped out, fixed and certified. It still trips sometimes. Previously I had a full building survey, but no electrical testing was included. The sparky took pictures of some of his finds, for his black museum. However, prev owner says nothing to do with him, so thats the end of it really. I can't see how rules and regs are going to make any difference to things like this, nor make people liable, bodgy plumbing and wiring are all too common. Sorry for derail.