More electric blues

Stand by, there is yet more legislation installers, and this time there is a legal as well as a moral or health and safety requirement to comply with. It's a subject I have harped on about several times ... fused spurs.

It would appear that there has been a steady rise in the number of deaths and injuries around the home as a result of badly designed and installed electrical installations. We tend to see and hear very little of this sort of thing from our trade but we are only doing the odd fused spur with only a nominal supply being drawn from it.

Elsewhere there are teams of enthusiastic amateurs fitting kitchens, bathrooms, conservatories and even whole building extensions without competence or qualification.

I have seen fused spurs added to immersion heaters, cooker points, two-way lighting and in one case it was even drilled through the wall and tapped into a double socket in the next flat, (done during the conversion from large house to four flats). I know it 's cheap to run a burglar alarm but this is taking the mickey.

If the cowboy sectors of our industry can get up to that much mischief with three meters of cable and a 3amp spur, just think of the opportunities offered to the "I-can-fit-you-a-new- kitchen-grab-the-money-in-cash-and- change-my-address-so-you-can't-find-me" brigade.

They can tap a whole new ring main onto an existing double socket, they can fit a cooker point onto an existing ring and wrap a couple of extra lengths of fuse wire round the carrier so it doesn't blow. I have even seen an electric shower fitted using 2.5mm flat twin and earth cable.

Opportunity to kill your customer
When we are dealing with high consumption units like cookers and showers the opportunity to electrocute the customer is increased ten-fold, so someone has decided to do something about it.

Here's an old joke I learned from Peter Moss: Q: What's burnt black and hangs from the ceiling?
A: An incompetent electrician.

Only, when it 's your customer who is burnt black and hanging from the ceiling the joke suddenly wears very thin ... you tend not to get paid for a start.

The new proposals then are to add the wiring regs (BS7671) on to the building regs and it will be known as "Part P" (of the building regs).

It will apply when dealing with mains wiring in dwellings, so let's get this quite clear: It is not just houses, it also includes shops, pubs and old folks homes etc, in fact, anywhere there are people living on the premises – hence the use of the word "dwellings" and not "domestic", Taking this route has suddenly made compliance with the wiring regs a legal requirement. It is also proposed to make it a legal requirement to inform the local council building and planning department if you intend to carry out any electrical work on a dwelling so that they can come out and inspect the work.

It's quite understandable that the local authorities have neither the time nor the manpower to inspect every installation, so once again we are to fall back on an "approved contractor scheme", and that means getting your self qualified or getting your work inspected by a suitable inspecting body, or maybe even both.

So far it all makes sense, if there are so called tradesmen out there cutting corners or making mistakes that are putting the public at risk of injury or death then we need to rid our industry of these people or at least make them come in line and do the job safely. The legislation is being handled by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and they have asked around the electrical trade for organisations to put forward suitable schemes for putting these ideas into operation. The deadline has now passed for the submission of schemes and at the time of writing they are still processing the suggested schemes and have not announced which or what they intend to use. They have, however, decided on a date to introduce the new regulation and that is proposed to be October 1 2004 so that doesn't give us much time to get our act together and comply.

The ones I really feel sorry for are the band of good electricians that for some reason or another have done their time, got their City & Guilds and are competent and conscientious yet, for whatever reason, have decided not to enroll with the NICEIC or the ECA. These lads are now going to be lumped in with the "cowboys" and made to tow the line ... like it or not.

It's the same with the security industry, there are some good installers out there not attached to any inspectorate but, because they cannot prove their standards and compliance etc, they will also be lumped in with the cowboys. Whilst we all want rid of the bad guys and we respect the rights of the good guys to work independently if they wish, we have to have a way of checking that these lads are doing the job right before letting them loose on mains wiring. As usual it is the few that drag things down for the many.

So where do the security installers stand on this issue? It is likely that there will be the option to apply to the local authority to have each installation individually checked for electrical soundness, but the cost of that is likely to be far more than getting the local electrician to do the job in the first place – it's an option but it will probably be self defeating on its cost alone.

£5,000 fine ... even when you do it right
You could, of course, always fall back on the old routine of just doing the job and saying nothing.

Are they going to set up a system of random inspections to see if any work has been done? Unlikely, you could get away with it for years.

Are they going to embark on a series of TV adds to inform the domestic public that they must report any electrical work to the local council? Unlikely, that would be cost prohibitive.

I’ve seen fused spurs added to immersion heaters, cooker points ... even tapped into the next flat

There is, however, a sting in the tail. They are proposing to set a fine of up to £5,000 for anyone caught doing illegal work on electrical installations in dwellings – even if the work is done right and safe. If you get it wrong and electrocute the customer then you are looking at a manslaughter charge and a jail sentence.

I could be cynical and say that there are those among us that will just carry on as though nothing has happened and take their chances, but there is another sting in the tail. There are proposals afoot in the real estate industry that is looking to make it impossible to sell a house or property without a certificate of electrical soundness.

This will very effectively blow the gaff on any illicit electrical work and prosecutions will almost certainly follow.

The chances of doing the work, then lying through your teeth and saying "it wasn't me" look like diminishing fast. I know that a great many installers sneak a clause into their terms and conditions saying that the customer must supply their own fused spur. Then they go in and fit the spur with a nod and a wink to the customer and tell them to say nothing. Up to now this has worked until something goes wrong and someone gets electrocuted, which, thankfully, doesn't happen very often. Now we have a new scenario ... the customer decides to move house, he now has to get a certificate of soundness on the electrical wiring and finds that the fuse spur has not been fitted in line with the wiring regs and condemns it, or at least he refuses to certificate it for the sale agreement. Is the customer going to honour your agreement and say he fitted the spur himself? Not very likely.

The customer is now faced with another bill for the job he has already paid for so he calls you back. At this stage you have to set the job right and certificate it or you have to confess that you are not a competent/qualified person and even if you CAN do the job right you are still not in a position to issue the right certificate.

At this point the ball is over the wall and you are in the brown stuff up to your knees.

Let us extend the scenario ... If the certificating electrician is fed up with unqualified people going in and taking work off him that he believes should rightfully have been his in the first place he may just sidestep the issue altogether by reporting it to the building department and let them deal with it, and a prosecution follows ... and don't forget that could be a fine up to £5,000.

It is quite likely that the first thing the buildings inspector will ask is "Are there any more uncertificated installs out there?" and start an investigation. At this point all he has to do is look through your database or your order book and he has a cast iron case against you for perpetually breaking the law.

Are you a gambling man or woman? if so you could "up the ante" by issuing a bogus certificate and try to bluff your way through. Now, if you get caught we can add a charge of deception or fraud or whatever the correct term will be for whatever the situation is.

Oh well, let's look on the bright side, they have good food, television and all the latest recreational aids in a modern jail.

Perhaps I tend to go over the top in some of the scenarios that I write in this column but they are not beyond the realms of possibility and, don't forget, all this new legislation is coming about because a few idiots somewhere can't be bothered to learn the facts of electrical life and work by the book. It may be that the culprits are doing what they believe to be a good job and the whole thing is done "in good faith". But because accidents have happened we are now all going to be clobbered by the same tightening of rules.

There is a very suitable parallel here: For years we have failed to get false alarms down until the industry powers stepped in and made us tow the line with DD243. Much to the disgust of all those of us who thought we knew better, it is working and false alarm rates are falling. It is small comfort to think that the misdemeanours of others in an allied trade are going to cause a backlash to us ... but can we condemn when we have done a similar thing?

Unfortunately just at this time I can only warn you of the impending legislation and give you an idea of things to come because the schemes and the exact proposals have not yet been published. I do not know if you will need a proper qualification or if you can prove your competence by having your work inspected by a suitable inspection body, or have each job inspected by the local authority or, in fact, any combination of the three. I just know that new legislation is going to hit us very soon, so be prepared.

For more info try the following: the NICEIC Part P helpline on 0800 013 0900; the website www.niceic.org.uk; the ODPM website on www.odpm.gov.uk; or, for Scottish readers, www.scotland.gov.uk. 

... and while in the 'safety' zone
You can't believe every statistic you read on the Internet, but I am prepared to accept the following which demonstrate that, as far as safety is concerned, some people show the intelligence of a retarded fruit fly. For instance:

Three people died in the UK in 2001 testing if a nine volt battery worked on their tongue;

142 people were injured by not removing all the pins from new shirts;

58 people were injured using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers;

31 people have died since 1996 by watering the Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in;

19 people have died in the last three years thinking that Christmas decorations were chocolate;

18 people had serious burns after trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth;

... and amazingly, 543 people were admitted to A&E in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with their teeth ... obviously corkscrewed at the time.

Terrible smell from your mother
The problem with writing this column is that there are at least three editors, the official one, Alan Hyder, and the unofficial ones ... and these include Peter Moss and Jimmy Torrance, (both of whom I list among my friends) who jump on every mistake to correct me. It's the price to pay for the job and I take it in good part. Once again last month Peter rose to the occasion with a cracking good letter in the Mailbox pages. The joke about "having my teeth out and a gas cooker put in" hit my style of writing right on the nose.

I must congratulate Peter on his memory; I first heard that joke from that late great Lancastrian comedian Ted Loone when he was in The Army Game on the telly in the late fifties. It was part of one of his famous letters from his mother.

The letter also ended "... and now the drains are all blocked and there is a terrible smell, from your loving mother!".

I must confess that in writing I employ a little poetic and political licence, I try to add a touch of the sensational and a selection of real and possible scenarios. But the object as always is to bring your attention to the current affairs of our industry.

There are some top class technical writers to be found within the pages of Installer (like Martin Kane and Gerard Honey ... and, of course, Peter Moss). It's their job to give you the exact facts, mine is to drive home the message and highlight the problems we have within our industry and for that I do not need to be too "correct".

However, please continue to write in, it all helps the cause of informing the trade and it will be a very, very ,very sad day when you stop.