"BigWallop" wrote in message
.uk...

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"BigWallop" writes:

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...

And what difference would it make in this case?
The bloke will very likely have never heard of
it, and is very unlikely to care even supposing
he had.

But people are now telling me that electrical fires aren't an issue
but,
with all I see and hear around me, I think they most definitely are
now.
And they're on the increase.

You didn't answer the point.

All the government figures I can see show a steady drop,
except for a small momentary increase around 1995.

Andrew Gabriel


Looking at some of the postings just in this group, I can see some
electrical questions and proposals that frighten me. These are normally
about wiring problems and/or schemes which people are doing or have
actually
done. So I think the momentary increase in 1995 is about to happen again.
That maybe why the government and institutions are doing something now to
cover their own butts.

The new requirements will go a long way to covering the asses of the
insurance companies when and if policy pay outs should be due, and also
the
electrical suppliers when and if things go wrong in the DIY electrical
installations they attend with the fire brigade.

The postings here are from people who are actually trying to find out the
best and safest ways to do the job. But just how many more aren't even
bothering to find out how and why it should be done, and are burning their
houses down?


Surely legislation should be on the basis of evidence of a rising problem or
on matters of important public policy, not an ever-more-complex rule book
based upon possibilities that might be forseen but for which no evidence
exists?

To put the scale of the problem into some kind of perspective, a
conversation that I recently had with a senior manager in a very well known
insurance company was quite enlightening.

Apparently, your house is likely, on average, to be so seriously damaged in
an accident that it requires major rebuilding once every _300_ years.
(interestingly, for thatched houses this figure is closer to once every 1000
years). I think that as he was making the point about people reducing their
risk when aware of obvious dangers (barbeques/bonfires near the house) then
this might have just related to fires, but I'm not certain of this.

So, I don't think that the major insurers are losing too much sleep over the
dangers of unqualified (sorry, should read Unregistered) people doing
domestic wiring.

Even from the government figures, the numbers of people fatally injured in
electrical fires and from electrocution from fixed wiring is miniscule in a
country of 60million plus people.

This is completely unjustified beaurocratic overkill.

--
Richard Sampson

mail me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk