Building Regulations &c. (Amendment) Regulations 2012
Debate between Baroness Tonge and Baroness Hanham
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, for bringing this debate to the House today. We all understand that a terrible tragedy occurred to her family, and I am very grateful to her for the measured way in which she has brought forward this Motion.
Building regulations play an important role in ensuring that buildings are constructed to meet reasonable standards of health, safety, welfare, convenience and sustainability. This Motion gives me an opportunity to update the House on this important issue and to deal with the many questions, or as many of them as I can, that have been raised this afternoon. Noble Lords may also wish to note the important report from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, which was published last year in the other place and which has been referred to, and that on 11 February my right honourable friend the Building Regulations Minister discussed further matters raised in the report with the Select Committee.
There are relatively few building regulations in total. Last year the Government publicly consulted on changes to them in England and on associated technical guidance in the approved documents. Prior to that the Government asked the building industry and other interested parties to share their ideas about what needed to be improved or extended, where it would be possible to reduce the regulatory burdens, and how even better levels of compliance might be delivered. Having sought these views, and taking account of the responses to the Your Freedom consultation and my department’s Cutting Red Tape websites, a range of proposals were developed and subjected to a further, detailed consultation. I can now confirm that those consultations and changes were discussed with building control systems and local authorities. The changes are expected to deliver an even better and more cost-effective way of ensuring that buildings remain safe.
I now turn to the specific issue of electrical safety. Discussions with trade bodies within the electrical installation industry and with individual electrical contractors show that they continue to value the national minimum standards provided by the building regulations. However, where there are concerns, we ought to address them. Part P of the building regulations, which deals, as the noble Baronesses said, with electrical installation in dwellings, has come under some criticism for its procedural complexity and bureaucracy. In fact, some respondents called for the provision to be completely revoked. The question that needed to be addressed was whether Part P could be simplified while retaining the safety benefits that it has undoubtedly brought about.
Currently, home owners can face building control fees of upwards of £240 for simple electrical work, such as putting an additional plug socket in a kitchen, approved by a local authority. In practice, such fees also prove a strong disincentive to those carrying out these small jobs—including home owners, who often do it themselves—to inform the local authority that the work is being carried out in the first place. Even for the majority of work that is carried out by electrical installers who are registered to certify their own work, notification imposes additional bureaucracy, as they have to tell the local authorities about the work they have been doing. This leads to consumers, who themselves are not competent in electrical work, relying on somebody else who may not follow the notification rules. Therefore, the scope of notifiable work has been changed, but otherwise this is a reduction in the amount of red tape. By law, all electrical work must still be safe, and this is most easily demonstrated by following the British Standard for electrical installations—BS7671—and the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s wiring regulations.
The changes will see the notification requirements focused on higher-risk jobs such as the installation of new circuits or work undertaken in the vicinity of showers and baths. The noble Baroness rightly drew attention to the problems caused by mixing water and electricity. This reflects the additional technical requirements applied by the British Standard in bathrooms and the skills required for working inside a consumer unit—that is a fuse box, for novices. In kitchens, notification will be necessary only when a new circuit is provided from the fuse box. When notification is not required, we would expect the work to be carried out to the appropriate safety standard, which I have just read out. Quite simply, it still needs to comply with that.
Baroness Tonge
I thank my noble friend for giving way. I think there is some confusion because, at the moment, there are statutory requirements in regulations for electricians to do things safely. What the Minister is referring to are advisory guidelines for electricians to work, which happened nine years ago, before Part P came in. The guidelines may be there but they do not have to follow them. This is the problem: we are going back to the old days. They do not have to follow the guidelines because they are just guidelines.
Baroness Hanham
I shall pursue my speech and make sure that we cover those points when I get to the end. The previous regime of notification tended to penalise the competent, conscientious installer with additional paperwork, while the unscrupulous installer could ignore these procedures with impunity. The changes that have been made reflect a more pragmatic approach. However, while the notification requirements are being reduced, the department will work with the registration scheme providers and trade bodies to raise general awareness of the safety issues and legal requirements, and how to meet them. Promotion of the competent person schemes, to which I do not think either noble Baroness referred, is now a requirement imposed on scheme providers by my department. My officials are working with the forum of competent person scheme operators, including the Electrical Safety Council, to see how the marketing message can be improved and co-ordinated. We will monitor the impact of the changes to Part P to make sure that we are better informed about how this work is going.
The competent person schemes now have around 40,000 registered electrical installers. Professional electrical installers will stay with the register. It is still in their interest to be able to self-certify their work as compliant with building regulations and not have to pay building control charges. This should mean lower prices for the householder. Whenever a registered electrical installer is used, they also benefit from the knowledge that the work has been carried out to standards of quality and safety. The new Part P will retain the core benefits that have been achieved while keeping administrative costs and burdens to a reasonable minimum. The indicators that can help identify the impact of the changes will be kept under review.
In addition, my department will bring forward further regulations later this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked me when. They will introduce an alternative route to demonstrating compliance with Part P by allowing for a registered third party, such as an electrical installer, to certify electrical work carried out by somebody doing DIY or an unregistered electrical installer.
It is not exact to say that safe work would rely only on the guidelines. Compliance will still be required and it is only the bureaucracy that has been removed, rather than the requirement to carry out things to safe standards.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I was asked about monitoring and if I may address monitoring, I hope that I will be able to answer the noble Baroness’s question. The plan will comprise a monitoring and evaluation strategy, which will cover electrical shock incidents and fires of electrical origin. We will also be looking at statistics on the operation of competent person schemes: that is, the number of registered installers and the number of jobs notified to schemes. Other areas which we will be looking at in preparing the impact assessment will be sales of electrical test equipment and awards of electrical qualifications.
There is a number of potential sources of evidence and it is not always easy to isolate the impact of regulatory changes. However, we will keep this carefully under control and will bring forward the available evidence in two years’ time at the time of the review.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, also asked me what pressure had been put on the Government to scrap Part P, and where that pressure had come from. I have explained that there was a consultation to which responses were made. As the noble Baroness said, there were some differences of view, but 71% of all respondents agreed that Part P should be amended. The analysis of Part P impacts on improvements in electrical safety was not entirely conclusive. It is difficult to show that Part P is singularly responsible for a reduction in electrical accidents. However, the Government felt that it had been in use long enough to allow us to form a conclusive view on its influence. Therefore, Part P has been retained, although, as I said earlier, a number of people suggested that it should be abandoned.
I was asked about the reason for excluding kitchens. Most minor alteration work to existing alterations is already non-notifiable. The change that we are making is to make all minor alteration work non-notifiable except when it is close to baths and showers. The British standard for electrical installation work has special rules on that.
Baroness Tonge
I thank the Minister for giving way again. I feel that I must put this on record because I think she has now said at least twice that minor electrical works in the kitchen need not be inspected and are perfectly able to be done by unqualified people, if necessary. I want to put on record that my daughter’s death was caused by a plug and a cable to a cooker hood—a very simple thing, indeed—which was atrociously done and, four years later, killed her.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that but I hesitate to go into what actually happened. We take note of what she said but that might have been considered to be more than minor works because it would almost certainly have involved work in a fuse box, which will still be covered.
I think that I have answered many of the questions that I was asked. Discussions and debates have taken place with my right honourable friend in the other place, Don Foster. We are confident that what we are doing will ensure that there is still safety within the Part P process and that householders will be clear about the requirements around electrical work and how they go about ensuring that work is carried out by someone who is registered with one of the competent person schemes. The industry has not been as successful in this regard as it could be, and this is something that new requirements for registration scheme providers will help to address.
Part P has always been based on all work being required to be safe, but only certain types of work needed notification. We have simply changed the balance of what is or is not notified and we still mean to see that there is proper safety and regulation under Part P. It is important to ensure that the building regulations regime remains current and up-to-date to ensure that regulations continue to fulfil their important role. It is also necessary to make sure that they are understood by as many people as possible, and we will ensure that there is proper publicity. I hope that, with that, the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her Motion.
Baroness Tonge
My Lords, I thank the Minister and the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench for joining me in this debate. I think that it is a very important one. I appreciate that the Government need to get rid of red tape—everyone dislikes red tape. I can well see that it may cost an individual electrician, and therefore the householder, a little bit less to do a job in a kitchen or a bathroom.
However, I, and all the people I have been in contact with over the past nine years who have had accidents in their family, would willingly have paid £200 or £300 extra on a job to make sure it was done safely and that no one died as a result. There is a balance to be had here.
Part P regulation has done an enormous amount of good for the electrical industry and could still do so. I do not see that the bureaucracy that is being introduced to replace will be any less extensive. We have not been given any figures and I do not see how the challenge panel and the monitoring will be less expensive than the existing system. I thank the Minister for her reply and I only hope that in the next two years of the review there are no fatalities as a consequence of the Government’s action. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the Motion.