I'm pretty careful asbout bottom posting, but as I'm going to do an
'interleaved' reply I hope I'll be forgiven......
"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
timycelyn wrote:
I'm in the middle of a pretty major (kitchen, as it happens!) project at
present. I have a number
You should be ok since you started before the deadline... not that that
makes the situation any better in general however.
I wonder how many projects I can call one project?? 'Well, nice Mr BCO, it's
all one seamless project called fix my house...' Sadly, ISTRM a time limit
too. Pity.
2. A public stink? I would guess there are not going to be that many
people who are going
to feel passionately enough about the issue directly. Perhaps over time
when people realise it is yet another (government inflected) reason why it
is so hard and expensive to find good trades people, then you may find
some more fuss being made.
From a DIY perspective I anticipate that most DIYers will not have the
faintest idea the legislation even exists, and hence carry on as before.
Those that are aware of it I expect in most cases will ignore it. I get
the impression that many people only have a faint idea about the whole
concept of building control and BCOs etc anyway, let alone the legal
requirements. Unless you have had building work done recently (or you read
this newsgroup) then that is not perhaps that surprising.
I guess the general "problem" (from the POV of raising a stink) is that
while part P is a general PITA, but it is not generally the sort of thing
that is going to threaten many peoples livelihoods in such a way that
cannot be circumvented (unlike some of the cloud 9 tax legislation that
Gorden likes to bash small businesses with).
There is a "time of plenty" for the trades in general at the moment (and
if two jabs gets his way and does manage to concrete over the whole of the
south east, it seems likely to continue). I expect most sparkies will
simply see complying with part P as another expense and hence a reduction
in profits. (for those keeping out of the tax man's eye, a big
reduction... hey do you think....). Hence many may simply resist it since
it buys them nothing.
The more astute sparkies may be thinking of it as a potential money
winner, given that they can cough up for registration etc, but then charge
a price premium for their service. They could also start to pull other
sparkies, who do not wish to register, into their business and use it as a
way of growing the business.
The group that is much harder to call is the army of "other" trades that
also do electrical work (i.e. gas fitters, kitchen fitters, network
installers etc).
Yep, the prognosis for any sort of mass revolt is poor the the point of
non-existent. Even if electricians become scarcer Joe Public won't associate
it with part P, but with some less well defined 'Things arn't as good as
when I was a youngster' malaise which isn't too helpful. Your analysis of
the motivators acting on the different tradesmen groups is interesting,
though. From other comment here I get the impression that it might be the
last group (multiskill fitters etc) who might make slightly bigger waves, as
they will be happy to blame part P for any attributable electrical woes
experienced by Joe P.
I think you are right... I have yet to see many reasonable explanations of
the whole fiasco in any of the press. Much of the coverage is so far of
the mark to be even unrecognisable at times.
The obvious danger is the press will look for the sensational "human
angle", "the government should protect the ....", "oh they did, cowboy
flouts the law etc". To get upset about the legislation itself, requires a
good deal more analysis and understanding of its implications and how/why
it came into being. You only need to look at the amount of time we have
spent discussing it in this forum, to know that it not going to happen in
a 20 second sound bite on the news.
Oh man, just starting to think about the 'human interest' angles the average
journalist will dig up to make a story out of what would be a pretty
technical issue makes me feel slightly sick. 'Shock horror scare, little
Lucy's gerbil had to wear mittens because some useless tradesman said he
couldn't wire up the elctric heater' (The alternative story is where same
gerbil becomes gerbil fricasee through malfunction of badly wired electric
heater by naughty cowboy etc etc)
3. The rebel.
I don't believe they have any statutery right of entry (unlike customs and
excise, or ironically, your electricity supplier).
That's what I thought - so we have a useful starting point here.
Guess it depends on the market. You may need to pay to have the various
works that have been done without notification "regularised". If they are
all to standard however they will not be instructing to to rip out the
work etc.
(in fact that seems like the best way forward for most DIYers, do as many
jobs as you want, when you want, over however many years. Then just pay
the one fee at the end to have the proverbial building control holy water
sprinkled on it when you sell the place. If anyone tell you that you are a
naughty boy you can simply say "Part P? never heard of it gov").
Absolutely. A useful optional extra in this approach is to lay in a stock of
red/black TW&E now (Screwfix still have it) as although the dates don't
quite co-incide by a year or so, I would have thought it would be one
obvious way that work will be dated by BCO's in years to come. I know other
fittings, clips and so on slowly change over the years, but a reasonably
competent faker should be able to put some wiring in in (say) 5 yrs time
that, after a few months of wear and tear, could look just like vintage
2004.
.. The only routes seem to be either by BCO visit (i above),
by sale (bit late by then) or by getting it wrong and having an incident
of some nature (fire/shock) which draws official attention (there is the
insurance dimension here as well, but that's another story). Am I right?
I expect so...
(other options might be being "grassed up" by a busybody neighbour etc).
Mmm, that would be a way to win friends and influence people, for sure. But
such snurges do exist, so it would pay to bear this in mind and deploy the
correct amount of surreptition. Easy for me as I'm on a farm with my nearest
neighbour 1/2 mile away!
Speaking of which, I do wish there was a happy medium in all of this - like
insistance on a good idiot proof RCD setup at the CU, which I would readily
support - having a farm I'm very careful indeed in this respect. [Sigh] The
problem is that there are clowns out there, who ought to have something
biological done to them with theri screwdrivers. Take the farmer I bought
off 10 years ago. He had connected up his outbuildings with under-rated
buried cables, when he needed to join them he brought them above surface to
a domestic junction box mounted on a dinky little wooden post (it was
weatherproof, it had a slowly perishing Tesco carrier bag taped over it!!).
The wiring in the house roof space was rubber so perished that the live
conductor showed through in places, and he had gone mad with chocolate
blocks as well. I reckon he should have been nominated for some sort of
prize.
--
Cheers,
John.
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Thanks for a throughtful reply
Tim