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yeah, I was a bit careless with my language there. It's a pretty sensible move to require them for rented properties, and I think more people should get them when buying houses too. It's the creep on the requirements I'm slightly less convinced about - I think it's easy for a committee to make new requirements which do increase safety, but it seems like relatively small gains from a pretty high baseline. But maybe I'm just being grumpy because I'm having to spend so much :)
And yes, I agree about plastic consumer units too :) I just don't think they should have been given more time to continue selling them....
In our case we ended up replacing them, in one case as we were running out of space in it once we'd put in the different type RCDs/SPDs that were required, and in another case because the manufacturer is no longer around and we can't get the right bits for it.
jdsnape-
I agree about the creeping regulations and the anoraks who come up with them. ElF and SAftEy gone gone mad innit!
I think it's fair to say they never do too little to protect the end user from their ivory tower. The reality on the ground is there are still a lot of dangerous installations or installations that have small dangers like the nicked live wire I found with my finger this week!
Airhead
It's a safety issue not a scheme to improve electricians income or support professional bodies. Plenty of slum landlords had been letting their tenants live with dangerous wiring.
The fire service were right to insist on changing back to metal boxes, it was a big proportion of household fires starting from arcing in plastic boxes and people store all kinds of flammable materials under the stairs, so yes it was stopping people being able to get down the stairs to safety. The term for the test is EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report), the certificate can be referred to as a NICEIC.
You do not have to change the consumer unit in every case. Here's an explainer :- https://youtu.be/08HJtW5ZwsY
There is no reason why NAPIT registered electricians should be cheaper than NICEIC and the difference in price for registration is not that big when you factor it over a year.