Re: Part P

[Kenneth Watt <kwatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3 May 2010, at 18:07, Jon Wilkins wrote:

> For the record, I think making people do stuff safely is a good idea
but
> poorly executed as it makes it too costly for competent householders
to make
> improvements to their own homes.
>
> Maybe wait a week (or will it have to be several) and maybe a new govt
will
> be included to reduce some of the bureaucracy.

You have to understand the politic of it.

The same thing happens with gas safety regulation or, so far as I can see,
pretty much anything else.

For some silly reason the government decided to introduce that stupid house
certificate thing under the guise of protecting home buyers, My thought was
simply this, wasn't that the job of the surveyor who you still have to pay,
certificate or not in order to satisfy the lender so, what's the point?
Doesn't having a survey done indemnify the buyer from any serious defect?
And, if it doesn't then why not, after all isn't that what you're paying
for, an expert to say it's okay to buy and get a loan on?

At the back of this you have a bunch of trade associations and commercially
interested parties lobbying government.

Of course they're gonna push for certification! You'd be an utter muppet to
think that they weren't.

It justifies their existence, bolsters their memberships and forces
compliant traders.

Surveyors happy, not their responsibility so they are indemnified. Traders
happy, they get more business. HSE happy, they have justified their
existence. Politicians happy, they've protected consumers.

Public, not happy, other than minority groups.

But, in the end, the great British public let the politicians and various
bodies like HSE get all this passed into law so, I've little sympathy in
all honesty. If people are, quite frankly, too stupid to look out for their
own wallets and get shot of a lot of this politically correct BS then
that's their look out. Whining about it after it's done serves little
purpose unless the legislation becomes unenforceable as nobody complies.

K.

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