Have you heard of Part P?

Most of us don't mind doing the odd bit of DIY in our homes when its required, some people actually enjoy it, but the majority of us only do it ourselves to save some money. We would actually prefer to be in the garden, out and about with the family or sprawled across the sofa in our free time but its all part of maintaining our bricks and mortar and not spending unnecessarily. However most homeowners are unaware that electrical work carried out in the home needs to meet the requirements of Part P of the Building Regulations to make it safe and legal.

During the recession last year, the NICEIC carried out a poll of over 3000 consumers across the UK's biggest towns and cities, which showed that more people are carrying out electrical work in their home rather than employing a qualified electrician;

• 35% would attempt to rewire a socket


• 29% would add a new light switch


• 28% would install garden lighting

What many of these people fail to realise is that attempting to do their own DIY electrics, they could be putting their families life's at risk and could possibly face problems when it comes to selling their homes without the right electrical certificates.The biggest concern in the electrical industry, is the fact that Part P was enforced over 5 years ago by the Government, yet only 22% of UK consumers have actually heard of it.

The Law which was brought in to protect homeowners in England and Wales, aims to improve the electrical safety in the home to prevent the number of accidents caused by faulty electrical work. Under the Law, homeowners who choose to do their own electrical work must notify their local Building Control Office before beginning any work, after which they will receive an electrical safety certificate if confirmed as safe. The Law requires an electrician to be used that is registered with a Government approved scheme, such as NICEIC to carry out most electrical work in the home, and once the work is finished, provide you with a Part P approval.

The NICEIC and Linda Barker have a campaign called "Don't take the P out of your home" to help make consumers more aware of Part P and why its importance for people not to be casual with electrics in the home.

Finally, how do you know if an electrician is Part P approved? Most companies these days have a website like Fulcher Edwards Ltd, that has a section about their accreditation's and an explanation about what each one means. If you see an NICEIC Domestic Installer logo like the one in this blog then it means that particular electrical services company or electrician is Part P approved. Should you wish to double check that its not a "bogus" logo then consumers can check on the NICEIC's website if that particular company is registered with them or not.

Was you aware of the Part P Building Regulations?

FE's First Blog!

Things have been pretty hectic here at Fulcher Edwards this week, which is crazy really, what with most of the UK being stuck abroad due to the our airspace being closed for most of the week but hey we're not complaining at all, the busier the better! However it did delay FE's first blog so apologises for that.

Now I wont lie, FE is new to the whole blogging thing so we had a good hard think about the things we would want to 'blog' about. Finally we decided that as much as we will give you an insight to our company, tell you all our gossip and the type of work we are carrying out at the time, we also feel it is our responsibility to help people understand the importance of electrical safety but without feeling like we are preaching! We are very passionate about what we do and really do our best to give as much advice and information as we can to our customers and help them understand why it is essential to only ever use qualified electricians and not any Joe Blogs to carry out any electrical work for them, however small the job is.

Hopefully in time our blog will be helpful to people looking for electrical safety information, whether they wish to use our services or just to understand "sparky lingo", and maybe our industry friends will find our information helpful too, pass it on and help spread the word. Our industry on the whole does feel the same concerns for electrical safety, as homes and businesses can sometimes be blahsay about it and end up using non-qualified electricians just to save some money. This in turn can cause further problems and of course the most important thing is, it can put peoples life's at risk. I think its also very easy for homeowners to become very complaisant with their electrical surroundings and forget how dangerous electricity can in fact be, so hopefully we can help make you more aware of those dangers.

Now it is a Friday afternoon and looking to be a glorious weekend yet again, so our first blog was just a taster really of what our company is about and was really just to introduce Fulcher Edwards to the blogging community and hope we are accepted with open arms!

Have a good weekend!

FE

Welcome to the Fulcher Edwards Blog

Hello and welcome to the Fulcher Edwards blog