That reinforces what I was saying about this idea of some kind of 'licence' - if gas safe isn't working for gas men how can we expect a copy of it to help us?
As you say it seems to have happened in every job imaginable - the police have PCSOs, ambulancemen have EMTs and fast response bikes, teachers have 'teaching assistants' - all seemingly serving as a separate support job rather than being a training stage like a kitchen porter (washer up) training to be a chef, or a 'mate' training to be a spark. The difference seems to be that domestic installers and 'PAT testers' tend to work independently of electricians with the sole purpose of saving a bit of cash.
If you look at how services like banking have gone, where you have to speak to a different department for every aspect rather than walking into the bank and speaking to the bank manager - it's clear that the idea behind this is so someone can walk in off the street, be given a 5 week course in that and just do that specific thing all day instead of training every aspect of the job.
I can see it getting worse for us - on big jobs I reckon installations might be designed by a designer on a computer, a containment installer will go in and put in the containment, then a wireman will go in and put the wires in, then someone else will do the final connections, then someone else will inspect and test it, instead of having fully qualified sparks doing the lot.
You can imagine the buck-passing that will happen when something goes wrong - 'too many chefs spoil the broth' as they say, but it might save a bit of cash, and money makes the world go round.
