Building Regulations

Before undertaking any work on your home, or engaging any contractors to carry out work for you, think about your legal obligations with regards to building regulations. As far as properties are concerned, building regulations exist to ensure that all buildings conform to a minimum standard and are safe to use as dwellings or places of work. As a homeowner/property owner, you have a legal obligation to make sure that any work you have done on your property conforms to all relevant regulations in force at the time. As well as this, the contractors carrying out the work also have the same obligation, and must work within the requirements of current building control regulations. As far as electrical work is concerned, for domestic premises, there are certain types of work that are 'notifiable'. In other words, your Local Authority Building Control (LABC), needs to know when certain works are carried out. The reason for this is to ensure that the work meets a minimum standard and is safe. Notifiable works can be completed in one of two ways. Firstly, you can do the work yourself as a DIY project on the basis that you first notify your LABC of your intentions and wait for approval from them to carry out the work. They will then arrange to have it inspected and allow it to be commissioned into service. Using this route is costly and time consuming and if any irregularities are found by the inspection, the work may have to be done again to get it up to the required standard, obviously costing more in time and money. The second route is to engage the services of a Part P registered electrician. Such a person or organisation is authorised to 'self certify' and can provide not only the installation service, but also the inspection and LABC certification for you. In the majority of cases this route works out far less expensive, both financially and in terms of time taken to complete the job. Carrying out electrical work can also involve other areas of the building regs too, Part P for the installation, Part L for energy efficiency, Part M for access and Part F for ventilation are just a few related regs to take into account when working with electrics.

So, what does all this mean for you? Well, without a working knowledge of building regs, a full understanding of the 17th Edition Wiring regs, a full set of test instruments and access to certification bodies, what chance is there that the finished work will meet the required legal standards? If you come to sell your house, you will need Building control certificates to include into the home information pack, (HIP), detailing what work has been carried out. Additionally, if notifiable works are not properly certified, in the event of an accident or fire, your insurance may well be void. And not to mention that any breach of building regulations can lead to prosecution and fines. Far easier and less expensive to use a registered electrician.

Read more HERE about registered electricians.

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