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So... I won’t be getting a Rolec

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I'm not convinced the rechargeable cell approach is worth the bother - life might not be much longer than a primary cell. The capacitor approach seems better, though for sizing I would note that (at least with my Model S) it's often necessary to press the button more than once - first press brings it out of sleep (audible clunk from contactors in the car), second press a second or two later actually opens the port.

Messing with the CP does have the extra concern that faults in your circuit risk interfering with the safety function of CP, though you can no doubt engineer it such that this is unlikely (large series resistor both in value and physical size so there's little risk of it being bypassed by mechanical damage).

OTOH, I have the port open button on the wall by where I hang up the connector and find that this works fine from a practical point of view, avoiding this difficulty.
 
Just to be clear, I would very much like the Part P rules to be changed, to allow a competent DIY'er to do their own installation and testing. That's already started to happen, as the Part P rules were relaxed a while ago to allow some work that had previously been a Part P only job to be done by anyone competent.

What does this mean in practice? If I used a former Part P qualified electrical with elapsed NICEIC membership (he prefers to play in a band now rather than do electrics), could he legally install and signoff a new garage consumer unit with relevant bits, 13A 3-pin and 16/32A commando sockets and ultimately a Tesla wall connector including DNO notification?
 
What does this mean in practice? If I used a former Part P qualified electrical with elapsed NICEIC membership (he prefers to play in a band now rather than do electrics), could he legally install and signoff a new garage consumer unit with relevant bits, 13A 3-pin and 16/32A commando sockets and ultimately a Tesla wall connector including DNO notification?

Bit like me. I used to teach electrical engineering science to apprentice electricians decades ago, kept my hand in for years (still do small jobs, EICRs etc) but I can't install a charge point (within the rules) as being retired none of the Part P cartels will allow me to join (the last thing they want is retired people doing freebies for people...).

In theory, I can install a charge point, then get building control to do the Part P sign off. That's a legitimate way to get the installation approved, and building control are supposed to be able to do this. The problem is that the Part P cartels are reluctant to grant tickets for people to do third party inspection and test, so in practice it's getting increasingly rare to find a building control body that's actually competent to do this, or who has access to the register to lodge the EIC.

The legality aspect is a bit grey. Part P is an approved document, not a regulation, so the law is contained within the Building Act 1984. It doesn't seem to be an offence for someone who's demonstrably competent, but not a member of one of the Part P cartels, to install stuff that falls within the requirement for Part P approval. As long as the installation is compliant with the regs, safe, etc, then I think it's pretty difficult for an enforcement officer to make a case for failing to comply with the Building Act. If the work is non-compliant, then making a case would be easier, I think, but even then it may be that the installation would have to be proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to present an unacceptable risk. I'm not up on the legal side of this at all, and @arg may well know more, but just going on chat with others over the years, I can't recall anyone ever being prosecuted, except when there's been an accident (even then it's not that common).

I suspect every electrician in the land has seen non-compliant domestic electrical work, I've come across it hundreds of times over the years, and this house (which I built) is the first we've ever lived in that has an electrical installation that is fully compliant with the regs, although that was to 17th Ed, 2nd amendment, so is now not compliant with the regs as they stand today.
 
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The bodgery I’ve found in my own home in the last few years is frightening, so I know what you mean. Backboxes on light switches with no grommets and no earth connection in them are my particular favourite, which meant that for a short while my freshly papered bedroom wall was live. I’m only this homes second owner, and since the first owner didn’t live in it and didn’t even so much as lift a paintbrush to it in the time he had it, it’s a pretty safe bet it was built that way. The things I’ve found in workplaces are even more impressive; Eddy currents strong enough to melt paint on steel doors, water in high voltage switchgear, and a 6600 volt breaker exploding during commissioning do make you think twice about the unseen dangers of electrical installations. Part P of course doesn’t apply in these locations.
 
I think it's the massive amount of bodged domestic electrical installation stuff that electricians see practically every working day that drives many of them to condemn all DIY electrical work, sometimes out of hand. The problem is that there are some very capable DIY'ers, who do better work than professionals.

I saw one electrical installation done by an amateur, that really should have been an example of very best practice in a tech college lab. It was so neat, tidy, fully compliant in every respect, including extras, like printed labels on absolutely everything, together with a full wiring diagram for the whole installation, that it was an absolute joy to do an EICR. Normally you have to spend half an hour, wandering around, scratching your head trying to work out how the place was wired, what changes have been made, which wire goes where in the CU, etc. This chap even had the start and end of each ring labelled on the individual wires in the CU, together with a neat, croc clip sized, earth tag he'd made up and fitted in one of the spare earth block terminals. It took me less than three hours to do the EICR, and there was absolutely nothing at all to be critical of, just the usual observation that the installation didn't comply with current regs.

The latter really annoys me now, as there used to be a category for this, C4, which meant it was OK, and compliant with the version of the regs that applied at the date of the installation. Now, we're supposed to give something that's OK, but not compliant with the current regs a C3 (improvement is recommended), and that grates a bit. There are millions of domestic installations that will now get a C3 just because they have a plastic CU, for example, and I'm pretty damned sure that the only reason that fire resistant enclosures were mandated was because the quality of cable terminations has dropped markedly over the years. The IET seem to have accepted that poorly manufactured/tightened terminations within the CU will overheat and may cause a fire, but that the best fix is to stop the fire escaping from the enclosure, rather than prevent terminations from overheating.

There's probably also an element of skill/teaching fade, with the importance of properly torquing up terminal screws, and re-checking and tightening them after allowing them to sit for a time, not being rammed home. I've certainly seen more burned terminations in recent years than used to be the case, whether that's something that's widespread or not I don't know.
 
What does this mean in practice? If I used a former Part P qualified electrical with elapsed NICEIC membership (he prefers to play in a band now rather than do electrics), could he legally install and signoff a new garage consumer unit with relevant bits, 13A 3-pin and 16/32A commando sockets and ultimately a Tesla wall connector including DNO notification?

Not economically.

The main thing requiring building regs notification (in respect of part P) in England now is creating a new circuit - which you inevitably are for a chargepoint installation (the other two things are fitting a new CU and work near a bath or swimming pool). Wales runs on an older version of building regs where more things require notification, while Scotland has a different system. Replacing an existing chargepoint would not be notifiable work.

Assuming you do require notification, the options are:
  • Get the work done by a member of one of the competent persons schemes (NICEIC, NAPIT, STROMA etc.).
  • Get the work done by anybody competent, and file a building notice with the local council's building control department. Unfortunately the council will typically charge several hundreds of pounds for this, so it's not cost-effective for just a chargepoint install.
  • Get the work done by anybody competent, inspected and tested at appropriate stages by a '3rd-party certfier'. Unfortunately, there's not many of these around; NICEIC decided not to take part in the scheme, so their members won't do 3PC work. Stroma used provide the ability to notify 3PV work to all their members at no extra cost over the basic membership; NAPIT makes them pay an extra £50/year to be able to do it. I have seen very few electricans actually offering this service.
So in practice it's still a closed shop. All this stuff was introduced claiming to improve safety, but in practice it just builds obstacles for people who would have done it properly anyhow, and does nothing about people who never cared for regulations in the first place.

Note that all of this is about building regulations compliance - the DNO notification of a new chargepoint is not a statutory requirement, just an industry procedure, and AFAIK anybody can do that.

The legality aspect is a bit grey. Part P is an approved document, not a regulation, so the law is contained within the Building Act 1984. It doesn't seem to be an offence for someone who's demonstrably competent, but no a member of one of the Part P cartels, to install stuff that falls within the requirement for Part P approval. As long as the installation is compliant with the regs, safe, etc, then I think it's pretty difficult for an enforcement officer to make a case for failing to comply with the Building Act. If the work is non-compliant, then making a case would be easier, I think, but even then it may be that the installation would have to be proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to present an unacceptable risk. I'm not up on the legal side of this at all, and @arg may well know more, but just going on chat with others over the years, I can't recall anyone ever being prosecuted, except when there's been an accident (even then it's not that common).

I think you are wrong on the legal point here, but the net effect is much as you say. There's almost no enforcement, so in practice you are only likely to get caught if something goes wrong, or when you sell the house. If you are already up on a manslaughter charge after an accident, then the fact that they can throw an additional charge under the Building Regulations is probably neither here nor there. When selling a house, the solicitor's pro-forma often asks "has there been any building or electrical work since 2005 if so provide certificates" - so you might be stuck with paying for an indemnity if you cant' provide them (or of course you can just say "sold as seen, tough" and see if the other party walks away).

On the legality point, this is all a twisty tale of statutory and non-statutory regulations and people using the term "part P" in a very loose way. Here's an explanation of things as I understand it (I have studied this quite carefully, but I don't have legal qualifications):
  • There are many things that call themselves "regulations", but only some are Statutory regulations (ie. have direct legal force and penalties for not complying). Other things may or may not call themselves regulations, and there is nothing directly requiring you to comply with them, but you might use them to show how you have complied with requirements that are statutory.
  • "Part P" refers to Part P of Schedule 1 of the Building Regulations 2010. These are statutory regulations under the Building Act 1984, and so have legal force. However, Part P itself just says: Reasonable provision shall be made in the design and installation of electrical installations in order to protect persons operating, maintaining or altering the installation from fire or injury. That's it - just one sentence! (there's an additional paragraph that limits the scope to domestic low voltage installations).
  • Approved Document P is much longer. This is not statutory regulation, indeed it says that there is no obligation to follow it, but it is Statutory Guidance: "If you follow the guidance in an approved document there will be a presumption of compliance with the requirements covered by the guidance". In other words, if you find yourself in court accused of not following the very vague requirement of Part P, you can say "but I followed the guidance in Approved document P" and that's an automatic get-out-of-jail card. Notably, this tells you to follow BS7671, and also contains the guidance that when modifying an existing installation, all new work must meet current standards but there is no requirement to bring the whole of the existing installation up to current standards, provided that the changes don't make it any worse.
  • When people say "The Wiring Regulations" they mean what is now BS7671. Although it still says "IET Wiring Regulations" on the cover, its status now is that of a British Standard - it's a specification of what is considered best practice in the industry. So in a legal sense, it's not regulations at all. However, it does have the advantage that it's a detailed specification and you can precisely determine whether or not a given installation complies with it.
  • So in summary: Part P gives you a legal requirement to be "reasonable", but doesn't tell you how. BS7671 gives you one way of measuring an installation to see if it meets industry standards, and Approved Document P gives you the guarantee that it meets the legal definition of "reasonable". You don't have to follow BS7671, but if you don't the onus is on you to prove (in court if necessary) that what you have done is "reasonable".
  • Nothing in Part P covers notification - that's Regulation 12 (still within the Building Regulations). So there's no such thing as a "Part P notification", a "Part P qualified electrician" - Part P simply doesn't cover these things.
  • The requirement to notify is in Building Regulations 2010, so it's again Statutory. The basic requirement to notify the local council Building Control of any kind of "building work" is in clause 12, but you have to bounce around to all sorts of other clauses to find out what "building work" means and which exemptions apply. Also, there have been at least half a dozen amendments applied since the 2010 version - in particular this amendment which reduces the scope of which sorts of electrical work require notification, and tiresomely moves the definition from Schedule 4 into regulation 12. There's a handy unofficial PDF here where someone has edited amendments into the original text. Schedule 3 is what allows members of NECEIC/NAPIT/STROMA etc. to avoid the cost of notification to Building Control. Beware that all of this covers England; Wales started with the same 2010 text but this then became a devolved matter and so subsequent amendments in England don't apply to Wales; although they have done some amendments of their own, they haven't done the one that changed the definition of notifiable electrical work so the original definition applies (eg. any work outdoors is notifiable in Wales).

Having struggled through all that lot, it's useful to note that lots of other legislation works in the same way - there's primary legislation (Acts of Parliament) that don't change very often, but grant powers to government ministers to regulate certain defined areas by issuing secondary legislation (Statutory Instruments, like the Building Regulations), and also by specifying very general requirements in the actual legislation but then giving "presumption of compliance" if you follow what are nominally non-binding industry standards.

Of particular relevance to EV drivers:
  • The Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016. This is the UK implementation of the EU Low Voltage Directive, so the primary legislation is the European Communities Act 1972. These regulations cover safety requirements for any electrical appliances sold in the UK. Again, the actual legal requirements are brief and non-specific, but there's presumption of compliance by complying with a long list of industry standards - notably EN 61851 for EV charging equipment. This is the answer to whether extension cables, Type1->Type2 adapters etc are legal: they are only legal to sell if they meet the essential requirements of the directive, and meeting EN61851 (which says no extensions or adapters) is the default means to comply. So you can still legally sell an adapter if you are able to show that it's equally safe - that seems a tall order for some of the questionable products on the market, but Tesla's adapters are probably OK.
  • The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulations 2017. Again UK implementation of EU directive. This is the one that requires all new chargepoints to have either Type2 AC or CCS (but can also have other connectors), and also requires all public charging to support "ad hoc access" - access without a pre-existing contract (people hoped this would require bank card payment, but in fact network-specific apps are considered to meet the requirement, just subscription schemes being excluded). It has the Tesla exemption (chargepoints exclusively for vehicles of one manuacturer are exempt).
  • Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018. This is UK-specific primary legislation covering issues for automated vehicles (insurance etc), but it also gives powers to the government to enact secondary legislation to regulate EV public charging. The government has powers to, for example, force all chargepoints to accept contactless payments, or to force petrol stations to install EV charging without needing a fresh Act of Parliament; however, they have not used any of these powers yet (ie. they haven't created the necessary regulations), though they could do so quite quickly if they wanted to.
 
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There's probably also an element of skill/teaching fade, with the importance of properly torquing up terminal screws, and re-checking and tightening them after allowing them to sit for a time, not being rammed home. I've certainly seen more burned terminations in recent years than used to be the case, whether that's something that's widespread or not I don't know.

There's a strong argument that changes to terminal design are as much or more to blame than poor workmanship. In particular, the issue of loose meter tails that gave rise to the metal consumer unit regulation change may be related to the change from (big chunky) tunnel terminals with two screws on historic switchgear, to modern stuff with cage-clamp terminals (of penny-pinching size and quality). This report makes depressing reading - if a technician working under lab conditions can get such bad results, what hope is there for electricians working in the field?
 
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Thanks, @arg thought you might know more about the legality.

The "new circuit" bit is one I looked at when building our house, and I took the precaution of adding some additional outdoor circuits, for charge points, connection points for outdoor lights and two runs of SWA out to an outbuilding where I'm planning on installing a battery system. By putting these circuits in, albeit with the cable runs just terminating inside enclosures, and including them in the inspected and tested installation, I've assumed that connecting stuff to them later doesn't require further building regs approval/notification, as they are not new circuits. As far as I've been able to determine, this approach is fine.
 
By putting these circuits in, albeit with the cable runs just terminating inside enclosures, and including them in the inspected and tested installation, I've assumed that connecting stuff to them later doesn't require further building regs approval/notification, as they are not new circuits. As far as I've been able to determine, this approach is fine.

I agree - that's clearly not creating new circuits and you are using them for what they were originally designed for. In England that's not notifiable. In Wales it would be because it's outdoors.

The more dubious cases are where you take a circuit that used to have a commando socket on it and replace it with a chargepoint, or one that had an oven on it and extend it a bit and put a chargepoint on it. To me, the first case might be just about OK, the second is really creating a new circuit that happens to use some parts left over from an old one, though it's a matter of interpretation.
 
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