Over the last two weeks we have had numerous responses to an article penned by Electrical Review correspondent John Houston (featured below). Thanks to John Moss for another insightful reply. The original response from Philip Whitley can also be seen below.
Dear Editor
Many thanks for publishing Philip Whitley’s measured response – it was marvellous to see a well thought through argument that tells how the current situation has arisen.
The only point that I can add is that analagous awfulness occurs in (my) HVAC industry, where academics and the academically nominally qualified pronounce on technical matters that they don’t actually understand. Some don’t know that they don’t know but others are afraid to admit it, being conceptually competent but practically dangerous “engineers” who never have to take their concepts through to realisation.”
John Moss
Arup
My name is Philip Whitley, and I served a five year apprenticeship and qualified in electrical engineering at OND level. I have been in the industry most of my working life, probably with a balance of experience of about 75% industrial/agricultural and the rest domestic., and am now 60.
The Emma Shaw case clearly illustrates several problems with the present system. As you say part P is no guarantee of quality, indeed some would say it is quite the opposite, as it has created “five week wonders” who go on (very expensive) training courses and then are set loose to wire houses with no previous experience. Under the old system apprentices spent a year in the industry as an aptitude test before three years of college, and if you failed any year, you were out of the industry! Today it seems everyone passes! I myself refused part P registration, as I believe in my experience and ability as opposed to paying out for a worthless certificate with an annual fee.What domestic work I do today is passed by my local BCO, with whom I have a very good relationship, as he is also apprentice trained and college qualified.
The problem as I see it is not that the testing was not carried out, but that the circuit protection, whatever it was , failed to operate in a ‘fault present’ condition. The safety of an installation should be built in at the design stage, and not reliant on initial or subsequent testing, which may or may not be carried out. The purpose of circuit protection is to indicate the presence of a fault as well as isolating the faulty circuit. The IEE regulations used to state that “all extraneous metalwork must be earthed”. If this steel partition had been earthed, as it would under former regulation, the situation would not have arisen as a fuse or trip would have immediately operated when the installation was energised. This fact alone caused this death.
In former times, any new installation was retested by the supply authority before connection, and any faulty circuits isolated and corrected before connection was allowed. This would have also detected this fault.
Far too much reliance is placed on RCD and MCB protection despite the fact that neither of these devices “fail safe” whereas the now despised rewireable fuse ALWAYS fails safe. If an RCD had been installed in this flat, it should have operated to prevent this fault, so I assume it was either not fitted or failed. Lets face it, an old style Chiltern ELCB will trip when a pan is boiled over on an electric cooker, so it would have easily prevented this tragedy, and I was fitting Chilterns in the 1970’s. I have spent some time on an electrician forum on the net, and you don’t need to be there for long to realise that the understanding of earthing, bonding, and the reasons for doing it are VERY POORLY UNDERSTOOD by the majority of todays domestic electricians.
The Introduction of part P was based on a barefaced lie told on the website of the Deputy Prime minister (John Prescott) which stated “This legislation is introduced to stem the rising tide of electrical accidents in the home”. In fact according to the only two organisations that collect accident statistics (RoSPA and the now defunct DTI) the tide of accidents peaked in about 1962 and had been falling steadily ever since. What the real reason was is anybody’s guess, but lobbying by NICEIC and manufacturers certainly took place, and far more manufacturers are now involved in drafting IEE regulations than ever were before.
To sum up. The red book/green book IEE Regs are far too complex and far too open to interpretation to be of much use. Far too much reliance is placed on RCD/MCB protection rather than using fuses as well as ‘trips’. Far too little emphasis is placed on the importance of earthing and BONDING TO EARTH of all extraneous metalwork.
The part P system, far from making things safer, has created an ‘underclass’ in the Electrical industry whose only purpose is to make as much money as possible from every job. They have the morals of the old school double glazing salesmen, indeed some say solar PV energy installation is the new double glazing.
It has also spawned a ‘training industry’ of very questionable ethics who offer instant qualification (and re-qualification annually if they can get away with it) in anything (at a price), and promises of untold riches in an industry which I have seen shrinking for the past twenty years or more, and a ‘registration industry’ which seems to be staffed by unskilled middle managers who flip jobs between trade organisations in completely unconnected industries. We all need to remember that the vast majority of the housing stock in this country was wired before part P, probably does not comply with part P, probably never will, and is still probably as safe, and in this case safer, than a new installation.
Phil Whitley
