I happen to agree with Soi disant, unfortunately.
The “Regs” we are all familiar with and refer to do not apply retrospectively and there is no suggestion that they do in anything said, they are regulations with an implied legal enforcement due to the building and statuary regulations.
As far as an EICR undertaken in line with the Regs is concerned it shall compare the state of the installation under inspection against the current Regs, and highlight any areas that do not comply with a measure of how significant this is in terms of safety, thus non-compliance could result in nothing through C3 to C1 based on an engineering understanding of the risk.
However, when a private rental property is being inspected, this is not necessarily an EICR (actually periodic inspection).
In Scotland the wording of the law does indicate that a periodic inspection in line with the current Regs must be done – so in Scotland you do a standard “EICR” as described above and in section 6 of the Regs, when it was the 17th it had to be in line with that, and when it becomes the 19th it needs to be done in line with that.
In England however the wording is very different, it does not demand that an inspection is undertaken in line with the current Regs, instead it states very clearly that the ‘Private landlord must ensure that the “electrical safety standards” are met’, and that the “electrical safety standards” “means the 18th edition of the wiring regulations”
Effectively this in legal terms means that Private landlord must ensure that the property is in adherence with the 18th edition of the wiring regulations.
(Presumably they will need to change this law when the 19th comes out as it doesn’t state pro Tempore.)
Now, like many, I am pretty sure this was not intended by the writers as it is stupid! Unfortunately, that’s what is written into law!
At the time it was introduced I asked a lawyer colleague (specialises in this area for building/engineering companies) if this should be interpreted as the installation should be compliant with the 18th, or merely tested in accordance with the guidelines of the 18th.
His opinion was very clear – it states “The standards of the 18th Must be met” doesn’t state “should be inspected to”.
What followed was a bit of a discussion, and in line with most law, basically it takes a court to decide exactly what was meant, he would be happy to defend someone who interpreted it sensibly (inspect like an EICR), but would also be comfortable to argue that it means the standards of the 18th must be met.
He also volunteered that he would expect the literal “it means the standards of the 18th must be met” to be the favourite to win, especially as the most likely time this sort of thing would go to court is following some event similar to Grenfell, where all the sympathies lie with the victims of “the unscrupulous landlord, and their ‘Electrician’ who knowingly misinterpreted the law in order to save money and increase profits at the expense of these poor victims of the fire/whatever….”
I don’t do EICR really, just overview ones that have been done and submitted to various organisations, and perform similar pre-inspections when we are designing hotel/factory/office refirbs’; but I would be really concerned if I did work in these areas as you know you are competing with fly-bys who will pick money making “faults” such as plastic CUs, but ignore real issues because that would take some real work! If in addition to that you took the actual literal interpretation of what the law says to private landlords, you would have no work at all!
Like everyone, I think the scams are a bit of a rip-off, but this is where they should actually be serving us, that is to seek official clarification from government and thereby direct their scheme members as to what meaning ought to be applied.
