I don't know of any electricians across all sectors of the industry who trained under the 14th edition regs who are not aware of the 15th, 16th and 17th edition regs and are not conversant with them and have not evolved their skill set as the industry has changed and new products have come to market.
So you are now personally vouching for every electrician across all sectors (I assme you mean domestic, commercial & industrial) being fully conversant with current regs, best practise etc .. and competent to practise in the domestic market? …. Or could there possibly be ones out there that you don’t know who are incompetent?? Perhaps even ones who qualified as electricans, went to other jobs then many years later came back to work on houses without any upgrading?
These days there are people masquerading as electricians who are deemed competent by these Part P schemes and the homeowner doesn't know they if they are properly qualified to be working on their electrics. .
So if there wasn’t a Part ‘P’ how would the homeowner know who was ‘competent’ or not? (Although I do not believe the standards set for 'competency' by the schemes is not as high as it should be!) Or am I to assume your argument comes from your claim above? i.e. before before Part ‘P’ came into force every electrician continually keeping ahead of all regs and legislation within the industry to ensure they were competent? Now wasn’t this one of the reasons Part ‘P’ was introduced ....... ‘electricans’ weren’t?
I don't see how you can say that Part P has nothing to do with the 5 week course when all these courses do is produce domestic installers whose certificates are accepted by these Part P schemes as proof competence.
I take it you are not a member of a scheme, or if you are, you haven’t enquired with the assessors as to whether having completed a ‘5 week’ course gains you automatic registration? Have a chat with a few to enlighten yourself …… (Not saying that the odd 'bad' apple doesnt get through!)
you seem to think electricians who qualified many years ago put their head in the sand and have learnt nothing from that day to this and are not now competent to work on electrics as they have not done any updating of their skills.
That’s my whole point! Who does know, or not know, if they have or haven’t kept up to-date and are still ‘competent’. In the industrial sector we tended to do a very good job of maintaining competency standards for the industry requirement but outside of this who ensures the self-employed electrican are ‘competent’ for example? (or even the industrial electrician wanting to moonlight on the week-ends with houses??)
I can only think your comments reflect on your current skills and a lack of up to date knowledge of current electrical practices as I have worked with many older electricians cannot say they were not competent just because they qualified many years ago
How little you know about me! But my whole argument is around that as an industry we don’t have any on-going professional development to make sure every practising ‘electrician’ is fully conversant with current regs, best practise etc …… especially in the domestic sector. Your lucky that everyone you know has maintained themselves as ‘competent’ by doing where required relevant course, re-training, further study etc ….. I can however personally vouch for ‘electricians’ who I would call incompetent and in a previous existence as an electrical manager have sacked them! (Though that would be a politically incorrect statement now!) And I’ll bet I did’nt even scrap the tip of the 'incompetent' ice-berg out there …….
BUT I will get off my hobby horse and gracefully retire from the arena without any further comments on the subject as I know I prattle on too much …… well for now atleast ...... :wink_smile: