Written evidence from Skelton Electrical Ltd

I am writing this today as a very concerned qualified electrician. After watching the HoC Communities and Local Government Committee meeting that took place on Monday the 2nd of September and after many unanswered complaints to my competent persons scheme I feel I must share my views on the current situation regarding electrical work in dwellings.

There are a number of points I feel I must raise, chief among which is how I believe the inclusion of the clause within Part P of the building regulations to allow people to self certify electrical work as long as they are a member of one of the competent persons schemes, is both ruining the electrical industry and ultimately making homes less safe.

When private companies are allowed to determine whether or not someone is competent enough to be carrying out electrical work there are in my eyes two key matters that must be addressed: 1. How likely are they to deem someone as 'not competent' when there is profit to be made from deeming someone as competent? 2. To allow this to happen legitimately the bar must be lowered and competency must be defined as such to allow even the most unskilled person to be deemed competent to allow a profit to be made.

Since the introduction of Part P, for a number of reasons electrical safety in dwellings in my opinion has not increased, it has got worse. I am regularly carrying out work to rectify non compliant and dangerous work carried out by registered 'electricians' who are deemed competent by competent persons schemes. The once respected craft of being a skilled and qualified electrician has now been devalued to such a point where you can now be deemed competent, and referred to as an 'electrician' by a government authorised competent persons scheme to work on electrical installations in people’s homes after having sat just a two hour open book exam. A recently introduced and common route in to the trade now is the completion of fast track courses ranging from five days to five weeks that cover just the very basics of electrical installation, just enough to be deemed competent by a private company who in my mind would deem anybody competent if allowed to do so. It is my belief that either UKAS, the government body that assesses a competent persons scheme's ability to operate is either ineffective at doing so, or the competent persons schemes themselves are operating outside of their guidelines in respect to the low level of competency they are willing to accept and their inability to display impartiality.

I feel that the three main schemes (NICEIC, NAPIT & Elecsa) are misleading both the government and the public in that they are defining their members as 'electricians' when an enormous percentage of them simply aren't! An electrician is someone who has attended college and has completed at the very least 900 hours of guided learning (typically over a three year period), and has then completed both practical and theory based assessments in order to display their skills and show their understanding of electrical theory and regulation.

The in-depth, complex and fundamental knowledge required of an electrician even at the very basic end of our work is something which simply cannot be taught in a matter of days. My question to you (and I do not mean this to sound condescending in any way); would you let someone with no more than five days worth of electrical training and no experience carry out electrical work in your home?

The second issue that I would like to raise is regarding public awareness of both electrical safety and using a registered electrician.

The three main competent persons schemes have been operating for approximately eight years under Part P. In that eight years there has been little to no improvement in public awareness of the dangers of carrying out electrical work and/or the importance of using a suitably qualified electrician. In my experience customers have no knowledge whatsoever of Part P and its implications, nor do they know the difference between an electrician and what is commonly referred to as a 'domestic installer' (fast track course attendee) by the schemes. The revenue generated by these schemes seems to me to be used purely for marketing to the contractor (their customers) as opposed to increasing public awareness to the end consumer (the home or business owner) of electrical safety.

I myself am registered with Elecsa and pay as near as makes no difference

£500 per year to them. For this money I have an annual half day assessment and receive not much else other than the ability to notify work carried out online which I pay extra for anyway.

The recent incorporation of Certsure and their Electrical Safety Register and NAPIT's own Electric Safe Register, as pointed out by you and others only serve to confuse the consumer even further. Certsure's Electrical Safety Register in particular goes into detail about commercial electrical installations and housing associations instead of having a simple list of electrical contractors competent (and I use that word loosely) to work in dwellings. There doesn't seem to be any impartiality and most of the online content seems to be about promoting the NICEIC rather than electrical safety in general. NAPIT (who I am not a member of) is the only scheme in my opinion that come even close to having a register of 'competent' persons, that serves only to promote electrical safety and finding a registered 'electrician'.

I don't think I have met anybody yet who doesn't know that their gas installer has to be GasSafe registered and yet you speak to anybody regarding electrical work about Part P and they haven't the faintest idea what you're on about. Mention the NICEIC or Elecsa to them and the general response is “what are they?”. In my opinion, this is shocking (no pun intended)!

The final point is regarding the lack of enforcement against people carrying out notifiable electrical work without being registered. From my own experience I have tried on a number of occasions to report dangerous work carried out by unregistered people and my local authority has told me quite categorically that they don't carry out enforcement. The furthest I have come to helping customers claim money back for dangerous work carried out is through dealings with trading standards who although very helpful can only deal with cases of fraud and/or misselling of services.

Although I can only speak for myself, I do speak from my personal experiences carrying out electrical work on a day to day basis, whether it be talking to home owners about electrical safety in general or whether it be from talking to my colleagues or talking to fellow electricians at wholesalers. I use a number of electrical forums online and the general consensus is always the same, that competent persons schemes are simply not carrying out what was originally intended for them to do. They are not making the public aware of matters of electrical safety, and misguiding the minority of the public that are aware about the existence of competent persons schemes about exactly who they are, what they do and what an actual electrician is.

To summarise, I don't believe competent persons schemes are effective, nor do I believe that they represent the improvement electrical safety or the public awareness of it in any way. I believe that they misrepresent to the public what an 'electrician' actually is. I also believe that the registers set up by the schemes online serve no purpose other than to market themselves as 'better than the other'. It is my firm belief that the introduction of one single impartial government run and mandatory competent persons scheme with a standard of entry no less than full qualification is the only way to improve standards within the electrical industry and to increase public awareness of the importance of using qualified electricians to carry out electrical work in their homes and businesses.

I look forward to hearing from you and to seeing the results of the next committee meeting on this matter.

October 2013