Electrician qualifications and registration

[rapidnailer07]

I'm trying to understand with regards to electrician qualifications and registration for domestic properties.

I've heard of various qualifications and registrations such as:
City and Guilds and the various levels (e.g. 1, 2 and 3)
NIC EIC
Part P

However, all of these qualifications and registrations are confusing.

If I wanted to get an electrician to do work that requires an EIC certificate, what qualifications and registrations should I be looking for? I've come across electricians who will do the work and then they get other higher qualified electrician to then certify their work. This feels like it's not as good as getting an electrician that can self certify, no?

Can anyone help explain things in more layman terms? Thank you

[Neelix]

Assuming you are in England or Wales, I would recommend that you confirm they are a CPS member

I would avoid anybody who can’t self certify

[Someone-Else]

The NIC and EIC are infact The NICEIC, it is a "governing body" that says its members have done everything they should have done the way it should be done. It is basically "A job for the boys" You get more work if you have their stamp.

Part P is a government Building regulation (Honest) it is meant to stop MR average from doing things in their own home. The idea was good, but it was always flawed.
An example would be: You want a new double socket, you may decide to do this you add a new circuit. This would come under part P (You can't do it yourself *) But if you want to change all your single sockets to double and add another to your existing ring final, you can do it as it's not a new circuit.

Part P is so confusing most don't bother with it. The "downfall" is when you sell your house the new people can ask to see the Part P certificate for the additional socket, but they can only ask if they know it's new........... (To issue a valid Part P certificate the person has to be part P registered, get the whole house rewired, part P is required but as you get a completion certificate no one bothers.)

* You can do anything electrical in your house if you want to and get a part P certificate, you can either get a Part P registered person to visit and issue a certificate, or you can get in touch with your local council building control who will visit and issue a certificate*.

* That is the theory, in practice they usually "find" an electrician to visit site, tell them the findings then a certificate is issued. Of course, all this comes at a price, and then they wonder why hardly anyone gets it done.

In an ideal world (Australia does it) you can't do any electrical work in your house other than change a lamp. (Not plug fuses, as they don't have them.) The idea being you get an electrician who will do the work, and also test it with a meter and log the results on a certificate that he/she gives you. The results must be within specific parameters. The reason for the testing is to make sure everything is tested and safe.

Then there is the EICR (Big test of whole installation) It normally takes a whole day to do if not more, but as Landlords now need them for their property you get an EICR done at 40mph as the electrician drives past to go and do the next one etc, so they are often not worth the paper they are written on. And unless there is a death and it goes to Court, then no one seems to really care, the NICEIC don't care if you complain about workmanship (Even though they say they do)

City and guilds are qualifications, but I believe you can also have an NVQ

NAPIT is similar to NICEIC (Jobs for the boys who paid the money)

CPS is the competent persons scheme (Another jobs for the boys thing)

I also here that a lot of people are having "car chargers" installed for electric cars, turns out that a lot of these are done wrong, but they can't be wrong as the person doing it is "registered"

The electrical regulations (The "rules" everyone is supposed to stick to) is written by the IET The current version is to the 18th edition. Often I hear of people being told (For example) "Your consumers unit is plastic, it must be changed as it does not comply to the 18th edition of the regulations"

The second part is true, it does not comply to the 18th edition, but that is because it does comply with previous regulations. The regulations are NOT retrospective.

I should also point out that "Just because it works" does not mean it is safe, it should be tested with the proper test equipment.

You decide for your self who you want.

[Neelix]

Avoid anyone who uses NAPIT code breakers book ….. it’s riddled with errors which are costing home owners and landlords huge amounts of money ….

[Scotty001]

In Scotland you also have SELECT, who are similar to NICEIC / NAPIT (governing body)

[ericmark]

I like @Someone-else reply, the problem is over the years the method of training electricians has changed, my dad did a 5 year apprenticeship and then 2 years journeyman with 6 months in 4 different firms, night classes were optional, I did a 5 year apprenticeship and I had day release, as a result collages did not do night classes, then the system changed again with block release, the problem is school leaving age, dad left at 14 so was qualified at 21, I left at 16 so was qualified at 21, today they leave at 18 and still qualified at 21, so to do that the collage training still has same time, it is the on the job training that is reduced, but at the end of each year the student gets a qualification, so the names given to the qualifications have changed.

There is also the point, does the qualification actually teach the student what he needs to know, I have a Fdeng behind my name, however it did not teach me anything about domestic electrics, the city & guilds 2391 did however, and the latter was taken in latter life as were the exams to say I can read BS 7671, that exam your allowed the book in the exam, however not enough time to read it all in the exam, so you need to answer some questions from memory, but some of the questions were daft, now no longer the case, but there were 4 classes of person, ordinary, instructed, skilled and competent, the last two the different was skilled looked after his own safety, and competent his own safety and others, and was a regular exam question, yes was daft and now removed. But it points out the daft things one had to learn to pass exams.

The regulations came out in 1882 Entitled `Rules and Regulations for the Prevention of Fire Risks Arising from Electric Lighting' and have been rewritten 17 times, in 1992 they became a British standard and this has also changed four time starting at BS7671:1992 then 2001, then 2008 and finally 2018, each edition says the date when designs must follow them, note design not the installation, so if designed in 1992 and only finished today, it can still follow BS7671:1992. And each edition states it is not law but can be used in a court of law, and

Existing installations that have been installed in accordance with earlier editions of the Regulations may not comply with this edition in every respect. This does not necessarily mean that they are unsafe for continued use or require upgrading.

the phrase "not necessarily" is used as CENELEC and HSE plus others make laws, which need to be followed so where the regulations are rewritten to encompass some other law or regulation is may be law.

However the PIR (periodic installation report) was renamed EICR (electrical installation condition report) and the 4 codes were reduced to three and C added to the number, so you know which version, and the "does not comply with current regulations if designed today" code 4 was removed as being unhelpful and confusing. Code C1 is dangerous, and there is little argument over what is dangerous, code C3 is recommended and clearly the owner has to make up his mind, there are codes like LIM and FI which say what has been included, but the problem one is C2 potentially dangerous, all 230 volt electrics are potentially dangerous, so no one can say the code has been given when it should not be, and the reverse is also true, in the main as electricians in the main, we consider if once allowed, then it is not potentially dangerous, there are exceptions, but we tend to use the electrician safety councils best practice guide as the rule book rather than BS7671.

However there are cases where BS7671 has been clarified in latter editions, for example definition of a circuit - "An assembly of electrical equipment supplied from the same origin and protected against over current by the same protective device(s)." this would include fitting a FCU, but it has been stated by most organisations fitting a FCU does not produce a circuit, likely since fitted to a ring final and you can't have a final final. More down to English to electrics. And "314 DIVISION OF INSTALLATION" makes it clear when it says "(iv) reduce the possibility of unwanted tripping of RCDs due to excessive protective conductor currents produced by equipment in normal operation" that a RCD does form a circuit, although many disagree.

The City & Guilds exam on the regulations does not require the student to interpret what it means. Only repeat word for word. And there is a little more to electrics than that, one items which is in the forefront today is solar panels and EV charging points and the selection of the correct type of RCD, and the different papers written do not seem to agree.

Laws are written then cases go to court, and the law is refined by case law, but unless it goes to court, poorly written laws often allow loop holes, so a consumer unit is a type tested distribution unit designed to be in the control of an ordinary person, anything fitted to a consumer unit must be authorised by the manufacturer to retain the type testing, so if you bought a Wylex consumer unit and fitted fusebox RCBO's it is no longer a consumer unit, it is just a distribution unit, so the law saying fitting of a consumer unit must be registered with local authority has a get out in England, not in Wales as in Wales it lists what you can do, where in England it lists what you can't do. I am sure if it went to court case law would result and say a consumer unit and distribution unit should be regarded as the same, but until some one is killed, there is unlikely to be a court case.

The whole idea of the schemes was to let the home owner know who was considered qualified, and to stop kitchen fitters doing electrical sub standard work, it was made illegal to claim your a scheme member if your not, so if you drop membership from a scheme, any logos on the van, or paperwork must be removed, you must not claim to be a member if your not, this is rather important as it is the home owner who is responsible for informing the LABC not the electrician when notifiable work is done by non scheme member, but for a scheme member this is reversed.

However the scheme providers have started to sell EICR forms, they have different colours to show if covered by the scheme or not, but a scheme member who is not authorised by the scheme provider to do an EICR can do one on forms with the scheme logo on them if the colour is correct, in fact even a non scheme member can buy a pad of the forms and used them if correct colour.

So a non scheme member like me, can buy a pad of EICR forms, and do reports, and the house owner looks at the form and thinks it is backed by the scheme provider, OK I have a city & guilds 2391 so can do an EICR correctly, but as long as I highlight faults, then I have not done it wrong, so I can decide not to issue any code C2's, if I give it a C3 I have still highlighted the problem and recommended it is fixed, so no court can say I have done it wrong, but it means there is no 28 day limit to getting it fixed with English landlord law.

Even that 28 days, on reading the law it does not include weekends and public holidays, so it is nearly 6 weeks allowed.

I did soon after Part P came in, some work for my parents, the builders ran off in the middle of it. I assumed incorrectly that LABC had been informed, so told them I was taking over the job, seems they had not been informed, and they pointed out in no uncertain terms it was done to home owner to inform them, even if most builders did it for the home owner. And getting them to accept my signature on the installation certificate was not easy, my son insisted that anyone doing an EICR to show our work complied must be equal or higher qualified to myself, and he pointed out I have a degree, and only then did they say I could sign the certificate. Yet my son had been employed as an inspector for other peoples work with a scheme registered firm, so he could have been the one doing the third party inspection yet he was not allowed by building control to sign the installation certificate. The LABC inspector it seemed had no idea what a C&G 2391 was.

When I mislaid the certificates on selling mothers old house, and tried to get replacements, was told it would take 4 months, so much for traceable records, and when the council did work on mothers house in spite of asking I never got the minor works certificates, so if the council don't follow the rules, why should anyone bother, it is all a money making exercise.

[kellys_eye]

it is all a money making exercise.

Testify!

[ericmark]

it is all a money making exercise.

Testify!

If the part P was done as it was claimed then when one comes to buy a house the solicitor would be able to get copies of the compliance and completion certificates from the local authority with no chance of being doctored by previous owners, or the previous own claiming no work done since 2004 when it was. But failure of the local authority to be able to provide the documents within a reasonable time or cost, they said at least 4 months, and I had to pay for workers time to find the documents however long it takes, and it could take a week to find, means you can't get documents direct from local authority, this was 2018 so well before Colvid.

The house I bought had the installation certificate and compliance certificate, it was presented as being for the whole house, seem to remember around 8 MCB's and half RCD protected, it seemed correct, it was not until I tried turning off the CU to work on the main house and nothing turned off did I realise there was some thing wrong with the report, it covered 10A but the A had been removed, so only covered the annex to main house, the old garage, there were a further set of fuses in a Wylex fuse box hidden between original ceiling and new false ceiling, with a small hole just big enough to switch off the isolator, one may have been able to renew a fuse, but I would not try removing one as may not have been able to replace it.

This is what I saw,

20190529_081240.jpg (133.06 KiB) Viewed 2002 times

which seemed to comply with what paperwork said, but on closer look I found this

20190529_081332.jpg (136.48 KiB) Viewed 2002 times

hidden in the ceiling. Picture taken after hole made bigger to work on it and fit a new 14 RCBO unit with SPD to cover the whole property, I had the cash to correct, but not everyone is that lucky.

The house buyers report did mention the fuse box, it said there was a disused fuse box in the ceiling void, clearly it was no disused.

As far as the solicitor was concerned he had all the paperwork on the house. Also house we were selling had two compliance certificates and a completion certificate and three installation certificates, and nothing to say which was valid. The kitchen had been rewired, and the wet room had been wired, the wet room wiring had been altered when new boiler fitted, could not find paper work for that, and the one installation certificate and compliance certificate seemed to cover whole house re-wire, where I know kitchen and wet room had not been re-wired except for kitchen lights.

I had also stipulated all ring finals no spurs or radials, but found spurs. Nothing on the paperwork to say where the spur came from, so new owners will not have a clue either, the re-wire was done for two reasons, one so if needed I could rent it, and two as mother with poor eye sight thought a neon on an extension lead was a fire and dropped it in a bucket of water, so wanted RCD protection after that, it was wired with rubber cables in 1954 but socket supplies still fine, only the lighting supply showed signs of rubber crumbling. Also no earth to lights, that only came in with the 1966 regulations.

The idea of part P was good, the implication of part P was rather poor, and the parliamentary review which resulted in many restrictions in England being removed pointed out less tradesmen were thrown off the scheme than would have likely suffered from dementia so it seems members were not having their work inspected as claimed, OK can see flaw in that, but it was mainly due to scheme providers not doing their job, why it got watered down in England.

To get on a scheme not so easy, as an industrial electrician I did look, wanted to enrol me as an electricians mate, with a degree in electrical and electronic engineering seems I took early exams which they did not recognise, easier for a Polish electrician to become a member.

It is now on the edge of failure, it replaced the Union closed shop system, the claim was although you needed to be a scheme member, there were loads of schemes, so not a closed shop, loose one more scheme provider in England and it will be a closed shop so will be illegal. In Wales it has always been debatable as to if legal or not, as it refers to BS 7671 which is not printed in Welsh.

[Neelix]

You can't blame Part P for ever.

Customers want cheap work or reports done so they get the cheapest contractor - and as we all know cheap isn't always the best.

Customers think I'm expensive, but I do the job properly and thoroughly - so if they won't pay so that's not my issue

The most amusing thing ATM is EICR's - people quote sub £100 - then be in a property for less than 1 hour - which is simply inadequate time to do the necessary .......... BUT they can find enough C2's to put in high quotes for unnecessary remedial work ..........

[rapidnailer07]

The NIC and EIC are infact The NICEIC, it is a "governing body" that says its members have done everything they should have done the way it should be done. It is basically "A job for the boys" You get more work if you have their stamp.

Part P is a government Building regulation (Honest) it is meant to stop MR average from doing things in their own home. The idea was good, but it was always flawed.
An example would be: You want a new double socket, you may decide to do this you add a new circuit. This would come under part P (You can't do it yourself *) But if you want to change all your single sockets to double and add another to your existing ring final, you can do it as it's not a new circuit.

Part P is so confusing most don't bother with it. The "downfall" is when you sell your house the new people can ask to see the Part P certificate for the additional socket, but they can only ask if they know it's new........... (To issue a valid Part P certificate the person has to be part P registered, get the whole house rewired, part P is required but as you get a completion certificate no one bothers.)

* You can do anything electrical in your house if you want to and get a part P certificate, you can either get a Part P registered person to visit and issue a certificate, or you can get in touch with your local council building control who will visit and issue a certificate*.

* That is the theory, in practice they usually "find" an electrician to visit site, tell them the findings then a certificate is issued. Of course, all this comes at a price, and then they wonder why hardly anyone gets it done.

In an ideal world (Australia does it) you can't do any electrical work in your house other than change a lamp. (Not plug fuses, as they don't have them.) The idea being you get an electrician who will do the work, and also test it with a meter and log the results on a certificate that he/she gives you. The results must be within specific parameters. The reason for the testing is to make sure everything is tested and safe.

Then there is the EICR (Big test of whole installation) It normally takes a whole day to do if not more, but as Landlords now need them for their property you get an EICR done at 40mph as the electrician drives past to go and do the next one etc, so they are often not worth the paper they are written on. And unless there is a death and it goes to Court, then no one seems to really care, the NICEIC don't care if you complain about workmanship (Even though they say they do)

City and guilds are qualifications, but I believe you can also have an NVQ

NAPIT is similar to NICEIC (Jobs for the boys who paid the money)

CPS is the competent persons scheme (Another jobs for the boys thing)

I also here that a lot of people are having "car chargers" installed for electric cars, turns out that a lot of these are done wrong, but they can't be wrong as the person doing it is "registered"

The electrical regulations (The "rules" everyone is supposed to stick to) is written by the IET The current version is to the 18th edition. Often I hear of people being told (For example) "Your consumers unit is plastic, it must be changed as it does not comply to the 18th edition of the regulations"

The second part is true, it does not comply to the 18th edition, but that is because it does comply with previous regulations. The regulations are NOT retrospective.

I should also point out that "Just because it works" does not mean it is safe, it should be tested with the proper test equipment.

You decide for your self who you want.

I think this post has confused me than help me. I thought an electrician who is NICEIC registered was the gold standard but now I'm not sure. Coming from a complete layperson, if I want to employ a good quality electrician for a job, what should I ensure the electrician has (in terms of their qualification or who they are registered with)?

[rapidnailer07]

The most amusing thing ATM is EICR's - people quote sub £100 - then be in a property for less than 1 hour - which is simply inadequate time to do the necessary .......... BUT they can find enough C2's to put in high quotes for unnecessary remedial work ..........

How can a layperson differentiate between the dodgy electricians vs the ones that do a proper and thorough job? The quoted amount for the job cannot be the yard stick for this question.

[Neelix]

The most amusing thing ATM is EICR's - people quote sub £100 - then be in a property for less than 1 hour - which is simply inadequate time to do the necessary .......... BUT they can find enough C2's to put in high quotes for unnecessary remedial work ..........

How can a layperson differentiate between the dodgy electricians vs the ones that do a proper and thorough job? The quoted amount for the job cannot be the yard stick for this question.

If somebody thinks paying £75 for an EICR is a reasonable price they need to think again

[Scotty001]

The most amusing thing ATM is EICR's - people quote sub £100 - then be in a property for less than 1 hour - which is simply inadequate time to do the necessary .......... BUT they can find enough C2's to put in high quotes for unnecessary remedial work ..........

How can a layperson differentiate between the dodgy electricians vs the ones that do a proper and thorough job? The quoted amount for the job cannot be the yard stick for this question.

If somebody thinks paying £75 for an EICR is a reasonable price they need to think again

That's a tough one to say, someone that has no idea on what is involved and what that sort of thing cost may not know any different, especially If you know nothing about the subject. you can only go by what you are quoted.
We've all been ripped off or sevearly undercharged and not got what we wanted at some point, and found out later because we knew no better at the time.

[rapidnailer07]

If somebody thinks paying £75 for an EICR is a reasonable price they need to think again

My point is, if a dodgy electrician quotes a price that is more inline with a quality electrician, then how can a layperson filter out the dodgy electrician from the quality one. What qualification/registration should a layperson look out for that would at least be a starting point for looking for a quality electrician?

[Someone-Else]

None of the above. Qualifications are just pieces of paper at the end of the day.

Assume it's not an electrician you need, how would you find a good ................



Are you in Cambridgeshire?