Electrical sign off

[Mike_scotland]

Hi,

 

Hopefully doing a self build soon and wondering if my friend who is a spark to trade, if he does our 1st and 2nd fix how do we get it signed off as hes not select registered  or that, can you get the building control to sign it off?

 

Hes doing it for very good mates rates so will work out alot cheaper than getting a part p /select registered electrician.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[Jeremy Harris]

I thought that Part P didn't apply in Scotland?  Unless things have changed, then I don't think there's any need for an electrician there to belong to any particular body in order to inspect, test and issue an EIC.  @ProDave will know, as I'm pretty sure he's not a member of one of the cartels.

 

For completeness, for those in England and Wales (not sure about NI) building control are supposed to be able to do the inspection, test and sign off under Part P, as a part of the rest of the building inspection system.  However, I found that in practice some building control bodies are not able to do this, as they don't have anyone with the right ticket to do 3rd party inspections and test.  I was going to do all the wiring in our place, and just get building control to sign it off, but was told they were very sorry, but couldn't do this, so I'd have to use a Part P registered electrician. 

[Redoctober]

From our experience in Scotland, we had our electrical system signed off by the electrician and were serviced with a certificate - Domestic Electrical Installation Certificate - this was sent to us via PDF and has a unique reference number. The certificate also shows the electrician as being NIC/EIC approved.

Whether this is a requirement for sign off I don't know - all I can say is this is what we have. 

I also believe that this certificate was also required by the BC at Scottish Borders Council prior to final sign off.

[Nickfromwales]

BCO in Dorset said no too. It’s a dying facility me thinks. 

[joe90]

And me in Devon ?. (But my electrician let me help do the donkey work to reduce his bill as he was very busy ?).

[Mike_scotland]

Hi guys, 

 

I read this online to it had got me thinking and wondering if anyone else had done similar.

 

Who is responsible for making sure that new electrical work meets the new Scottish building standards?

You are. By law, homeowners and landlords have to be able to prove that all new electrical work and any change to existing electrical wiring meet the new rules. Your local authority has the power to force you to remove or alter work that fails to do this.

What should you do when you need electrical work carried out on a property?
You have two options:

• Employ an electrician that is registered with one of the government-approved schemes. These qualified electricians are known as ‘registered installers’; or
• Let your local authority check and approve the work when it’s been done.

We recommend homeowners use an electrician that is registered with one of the government-approved schemes for all electrical work.

 

My my local authority states on there website if you use a governing body for electrical you get a rebate of 100 odd off your building control cost. So I'm wondering if you dont use it they will use that 100 to check it.

 

I have emailed the building control for my area.

[Redoctober]

There you go, hopefully question answered. Could you let us know what the outcome is though, as that would be a useful conclusion to this thread.?

[ProDave]

Okay.  I am an electrician in the Highlands.  I do new builds and other notifiable work.  All that Building control require is an Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC) and you don't need to be a member of a competent persons scheme to produce and sign one of those.  

 

I do work in Highland, Invernessshire and Moray council areas and all have accepted my certificates.  iirc Invernesshire phoned me when I submitted the first one to them to check my qualifications and were happy.

 

If you are just doing alterations to an existing building then not very much is notifiable, the two that are most likely is a rewire of a flat or 3 storey building requires a building warrant.

 

This £100 rebate thing, is the "Certificate Of Conformance" scheme.  This was introduced in Scotland about 10 years ago.  IF you CHOOSE to use an electrician who is a member of such a scheme then you will indeed get a small discount on the building warrant fee.  When the scheme first came in, I attended a Highland council seminar about it and it was made clear the scheme was optional, so I have chosen not to sign up to it with the additional burdens it would place on me. I advise my customers not to tick that box.

 

 

[andyscotland]

It does seem to vary in Scotland depending on local authority.

 

As @ProDave says, in theory under the legislation there are two options that the customer can choose between:

• Use an "Approved Certifier of Construction" to sign it off - you get a 3% discount off the warrant fee if you tell the council at the time you submit your building warrant application that you'll will be doing this. If you've already paid for the warrant AFAIK you can't get the discount later. Some - but not all - SELECT and NICEIC members are on the approved certifiers register. I believe the legislation allows for an Approved Certifier to certify the electrics even if they didn't do the installation, but in practice it's hard to find one that will.
• Don't use an "Approved Certifier" and it then falls to the local authority to verify that the installation is satisfactory.

 

Unfortunately if you go the second (old-school) route, local authorities have quite wide discretion to decide what they are/aren't willing to accept as evidence that the installation meets the requirements.

 

Some broadly follow the minimum requirements in the regs / procedural handbook and will just accept an EIC (which as @ProDave says can be done by anyone if they know what they're doing) and may ask for information about the qualifications / experience of the person that produced it. They may also choose to do some on-site checks of their own.

 

In Edinburgh, however, their checklist for the completion certificate requires "Certificate of Construction (Electrics) or electrical compliance certificate and copy of electrical installers trade card (SELECT or NICEIC)". Their line is that it's a statutory requirement for the electrical work be done by a competent person, and the only evidence of competence they will accept is Approved Certifier status or membership of the schemes. They are not open to discussing any alternate routes for demonstrating competence and compliance.

 

So I would suggest checking with your local council direct what they will / won't accept. With luck yours will be one of the more flexible ones.

 

If your council is more obstinate, but you still want your friend to do the install, then you would have two potential options (which might still be cost effective if he's giving you a good price on the install labour):

• Get him to complete the "Design" and "Construction" parts of the installation certificate and then get a NICEIC/SELECT member to sign off the "Inspection & Testing" section. You may need to shop around to find someone willing to do this - even though the certificate quite clearly breaks down the responsibilities of the different people signing it, some firms are nervous that they might become liable for problems with the install. I think also some of the schemes restrict their members from doing this, for whatever reason. Your friend may have contacts though?
• Or, get your friend to complete all three parts of the installation certificate, but then get a NICEIC/SELECT member to do an Electrical Installation Condition Report and submit both. It may be easier to find a contractor to do this : an EICR is a standard service, and there's no doubt at all that the firm doing it are only responsible for the inspection & testing.

Either way get the eventual-signer-offer on board as early as possible and make sure it's clear if e.g. they want to do an inspection at first fix, that they're happy with how your spark is planning to do it etc. You don't want to complete the work and then discover you can't find anyone with the right paperwork that's happy to give it a clean report.

Edited October 24, 2019 by andyscotland
typos and tags didn't work

[Mike_scotland]

Thanks guys!

 

I have emailed my local building warrant authority and await there feed back

On 24/10/2019 at 13:16, Redoctober said:

From our experience in Scotland, we had our electrical system signed off by the electrician and were serviced with a certificate - Domestic Electrical Installation Certificate - this was sent to us via PDF and has a unique reference number. The certificate also shows the electrician as being NIC/EIC approved.

Whether this is a requirement for sign off I don't know - all I can say is this is what we have. 

I also believe that this certificate was also required by the BC at Scottish Borders Council prior to final sign off.