A forum for open discussion on communities and local government policy.

Achieving Building Standards

The Government has recognised that there are some issues with the existing system of Building Regulation, including concerns about compliance and enforcement. In particular, the Government is interested in reviewing the effectiveness of its guidance, concerns about industry’s ability to find the right resources, and questions about whether Building Regulations are targeting the right things in the right way.

As a result we have initiated a programme of work to consider the current situation of Building Regulations and how we manage and maintain them, and to identify what we might do to improve this.

This topic will provide input to this work and will run until 13 December 2006. Below is a list of the points that we hope that this discussion will help us to address. We anticipate that many people will want to contribute to this discussion, so in order to manage the site more efficiently we will only be able to display responses which address at least one of the questions below, and which follow the discussion rules of this site.

  • Are building standards regulating for the right things in the right way?
  • Are these standards being achieved, and if not is there anything stopping them from being enforced?
  • What helps people to comply with them?
  • What stops people from complying with them?
  • How could we improve compliance and why will this work?

All of your views are welcome and will be even more effective if you state in which capacity they are made; either as a member of the general public e.g. home owner or as someone with a professional interest e.g. architect.

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part P

Posted by mapj1 on 13/12/2006 - 14:49

To John Neal, who believes " People cannot legally carry out gas installations (even if the part only costs £10)"
and they do not do it? really, what 'law'?

Firstly the law for gas is just fine as it stands, my reading of the latest SI is that only the competant are allowed to do gas work, and only the registered and competant can do gas works "for hire or reward". Now, there are plenty of people doing pro-bono and DIY work on gas installations, to the necessary standards of competance, and they simply do not trouble the scorers, as they are not required to register their work, unless perhaps it also falls under the building regs. Some DIY gas work may be illegal, sure, if it fails to meet the minimum requirements for ventilation and flueing, routing of gas pipes under floors and so on, but the very low accident rate suggests that in practice DIY gas work is NOT a problem. It is shoddy work by incompetant persons that is the problem, not neccessarily unregistered, a most important distinction.
The HSE review of gas safety in 2000 concluded exactly this, and I think the dis-information about what is and is not illegal should cease. Anyone interested should look at the ARGI website, and compare it with CORGIs, certainly there is much to be learnt, even from what is effectivly a small militant fraction. (ARGI being to CORGI in scale, a small irritation, much like NAPIT to NICIEC, at least in terms of size and the scope of who has heard of it, though for legal reasons most ARGI members belong to both..)

So back to electrics, where vastly more people are technically competant than are actually belonging to an approved scheme. Why should we prevent some of the very people whom society depends upon, industrial and commercial electricians, electronics and control professionals etc, from doing their own wiring, and making their homes safer? (or as I would like to do, in addition to my ham radio, to experiment with some aspects of home automation, perhaps with a view to improved energy efficiency and so on.) I for one am not interested in employing some city and guilds short course wonder monkey to impose a 'bog standard' electrical installation on my house, at vast cost, when I know (the best part of a quarter century of experience of design and later R and D thank you very much) I can do it better and more effectivly, and have money left over. Particularly if that left over money makes my family's life safer in some another way, for example using it to get my car brakes serviced.

Any control at all, even the mere filing of an EIC with the LABC office and no visit, costs significant money, and I would like to see the cost per life saved compared with the same metric but spending the same money in a different way, perhaps in the NHS, or on road safety, to my knowledge this comparison is never done.

If you must do something to fix the unbroken, mandate a periodic inspection of all controlled services in domestic property either at changes of ownership, or every decade or so, which ever occurs sooner, and leave it at that.
regards

Mike, G7VZY
(Senior Consultant Engineer, Phd Elec Eng)

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