Ah, the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting, a professional body I’ve told to sod off from the end of March ‘26. I believe they, and NAPIT, are failing the industry while lining their own pockets, so the Independent Non-Accredited Electrical Contractor flag is the only one I’ll be flying from now on.
This article is an abridged version of the full story which can be viewed below…
But for those still reading, well, it’s perhaps sad because back in the day, I was proud to have become a NICEIC Approved Contractor after previously being registered with the National Association of Professional Inspectors and Testers, “NAPIT”, for four years. To me, professional registration with either body meant the hard work and expense of my mid-life retraining and starting my business were paying off. These inspection bodies were taking me seriously, and over the next few years there would be membership of others too; most notably, at least electrically speaking, the Microgeneration Certification Scheme for solar PV and the Electrical Contractors Association... for a rather nice diary although, admittedly, pretty much bugger-all else.
There’s a certain kudos attached in being able to legitimately place the pennant of any professional body onto ones website, stationery and van graphics, although sure, it’s always going to punch your wallet up the knickers for the privilege, nonetheless, to have such organisations assess you and accept you helps you to feel like all the hard work was worth it.
Over time, the sheen has worn off as it strongly feels like not only are the likes of NICEIC and NAPIT presenting an uneven playing field which penalises small contractors such as myself who want to do a diligent and honest job, while larger firms seem to be allowed to mop up by putting in half the effort, but they actively appear to be working to lower standards instead of levelling up the industry.
It’s come to a point where brand deterioration of these Competent Persons Schemes means I’m at a full 180 on ten years ago and I no longer want their fucking logos anywhere near my good name and reputation.
NICEIC and NAPIT aren’t industry champions valiantly fighting our corner as they’d have you believe. They are not facilitating me, if indeed they ever were, in fact, they are now actively in my way.
Perhaps other contractors feel that being able to display the ensign of a Competent Persons Scheme elevates them above some asshole handyman who tells everyone electrics is piss without him ever having parted the pages of a regs book in his life, and, yeah, I get that. This very website has sported accreditation logos for the past fourteen years along with articles banging on about how I could be trusted exactly because I was a member of NAPIT or NICEIC, and therefore obviously trustworthy for overseeing a proper job. Something reinforced of course by both brands who promote safety and compliance as being front and centre of their core values.
But having been a member both of both organisations, and although both make fine claims of quality and warranty, it tends to mean little in practice if you’re the poor sap having your pants pulled down by a rogue electrician on their books.
If I, as a conscientious contractor, come across a CPS member who is an absolute chancer or even a danger to the public, there’s no mechanism to grass them up. I tried it with NAPIT exactly a decade ago when I was with them; it’s all documented right here for the few of you who still have the attention span to read physical text, and I’m sorry to say it all went nowhere.
NAPIT, at that time, and in this area, didn’t understand brand devaluation. If your logo is supposed to confidently stand for reliability and trust in the eyes of the public, then you can’t let your assessors take on anyone and everyone with no real vetting, even if it does boost your membership numbers and your coffers. But that’s the problem with the Competent Person Scheme model – the primary scheme being to make a phat stack of cash because they’re for-profit businesses and not the consumer champions they’d have you believe.
In 2016, I jumped ship to NICEIC who have themselves been ignorantly accelerating toward today’s iceberg for quite some time. I’ve had the same guy for all but two of my assessments, and those assessments have been more rigorous than any of NAPITs, although it’s a postcode lottery and there are good and bad assessors for both. When I’ve been picked up on minor points, I’ve taken them on the chin, after all, I make mistakes like anyone else, and if a third-party can demonstrate something I could have done better, or where I’ve misinterpreted the regs, then fine, that’s a valid learning experience and not one they’ll ever catch me out on again. That’s not to say I’ve agreed with all criticism, and the general rule of assessment is that if you have a choice out on site of taking route 1 or route 2, whichever you choose will be “wrong” and your assessor will tell you it should be done the other way.
But my piss first started boiling on my 2024 assessment when the guy who had been ticking me off, largely with flying colours, as fit-for-purpose since 2016, told me I wasn’t “doing enough to maintain my Approved Contractor membership”
You fucking what?
And this leads me on to fuck you NIC point one. I used to be MCS accredited for Solar PV. I used to be qualified for EV charging installations. The reason I pulled those strings from my bow is not because I lack the skills or technical expertise for such work, but because NIC, NAPIT, MCS and the fucking UK government made it a red-tape nightmare for we small contractors to compete. These pricks were the very ones who allowed cronies to ride in, production-line such work using an ‘all-sites-should-be-treated-the-same’ blueprint which meant low-cost, low-standard installations were thrown at the wall with glaring oversights on workmanship and regulatory compliance. If I took my assessor to most EV, PV, or heat pump installations and told the ponce that it was my work, I’d be hauled over the coals, yet the national firms get away with it because big business pays – not that I’m suggesting any brown envelopes have been stuffed with cash in exchange for a blind eye, but we all know renewables are shit; they’re EICR failures of the future and I can’t compete because I’d do the job properly… or otherwise NIC would have my ass.
But by not doing such work, precisely because the very bodies I pay to be a member of helped to make it all far too burdensome, I’m now accused of letting down “team Approved Contractor”.
Whenever the pencil-dicks in whatever UK government get involved in a well-meaning but disastrous attempt at protecting the consumer, the result is usually the same. Larger contractors with deep pockets set up shop, throw personnel at the red-tape, chuck in piss-poor install work, then shut down and bugger off before any warranty issues start rolling in, and probably before starting again under a new company name. Either that or they’re well-known national firms such as Octopus and British Gas who can sling enough staff and T&C’s at it to brazen out all the bad work versus customers who think they got a good deal. We honest contractors, providing bespoke services, looking after our clients for life, working diligently to the rules, and who stick around because our name is our reputation, are the ones getting frozen out, and a lot of the time, Joe Public doesn’t even realise he’s getting a raw deal.
Staggered standards are the main problem with the CPS model. We one-man-bands face a brutal level of scrutiny and accountability that the larger firms chucking in renewables or new builds enjoy avoiding. Not only do they get away with corner cutting to maximise their profits, but the likes of NICEIC, supposedly fighting on behalf of our industry, actively help to skew the system to make it harder for small contractors. They contribute to the red tape and expense, the hoops we have to jump through, and they themselves are allowing standards to drop as they bite the pillow keeping their big-boy fuck-buddy friends happy.
And it’s only those who are paying to be policed, who get policed. From bona fide electricians who simply don’t need accreditation or choose not to have it, down to handyman or kitchen fitter fuck-ups who maybe shouldn’t be pissing around with the wiring, anyone working without accreditation escapes all the monitoring and will generally only ever be held to account if they get done for large scale fraud or for killing someone.
End of an era
My telling NICEIC to sod off means I’m disappearing under the radar, but it doesn’t really change anything. I can still diligently do my job, still get insurance, still work quite legally, but I no longer have to pay for the indignity of having some has-been tell me I’m not fit to carry the logo they represent because I’m not covering enough of the ever-increasing breadth of BS7671, despite however I may have proven myself in the past.
And I’m lucky because I have a large, loyal and affluent customer base which is simply down to where I happen to live and because I’m personable with my clients and I’ve always striven to put them first. That is how trust reputations get built. Had I been money motivated then I wouldn’t enjoy the loyalty I’ve built, but any client who has dealt with me knows I’m not going to charge more than what’s listed on my website, that the work will be to a standard they expect, that I’ll stand by my warranty even if I end up personally out of pocket, and that any job will be attended to efficiently. The only thing people can complain about is my responding slowly to messages or the belated sending of estimates and invoices, and that’s simply because the demand is so high, I just don’t get enough sober time behind the keyboard.
As with NAPIT a decade ago, I want to divorce my brand from NIC’s red, white and black cack. It’s sunk to a toxic level with any association being detrimental to my good name. They’ve been so busy lining their own pockets, that they’ve forgotten why they even exist in the first place: I don’t think they’re helping me, and I don’t think they’re helping the industry. The various problems we’ve got have all happened on their watch and to their financial benefit, or at least that’s how it’s appearing to a rising number of dissatisfied sparks.
So, here’s the big question you might want me to answer. If I’ve binned NIC and burned bridges with NAPIT, what does that mean for my business and how will I appraise Local Authority Building Control on electrical work that falls under Part-P of the building regulations?
The CPS’ claim they provide a workmanship warranty: NICEIC call theirs the “Platinum Promise” while NAPIT blag about their “Six Year Work Quality Guarantee”. They’re both equally worthless for the most part, and if it comes to the point where a homeowner needs to call upon one of these gilt-edged guarantees, then that means they’ve already fallen out with whatever spark has made a fucking mess of their home. The promise of putting right is wholly dependent on that same electrician sorting out their own mess, and if you don’t want the guy who screwed you over back in your house with a hammer in his hand and a chip on his shoulder, then you’re shit out of luck because that’s where the warranty dies!
So, for my customers, it means fuck all. Do you think my loyal client base cares if I’m with a CPS or not? If I say to Jill or Joe Schmoe, “Sure, I can do your job, but I’m not with NICEIC anymore”, does anyone believe that their response will be anything other than “… uh… okay… so can you start Tuesday?”
Of course not. My electrical certificates and reports are still wholly valid, I can still get insurance, and my personal warranty still stands. I have never fucked a customer over which is why my diary always holds more work than I can handle.
So, what about Part-P?
Certain jobs are notifiable to Local Authority Building Control under parts A to T of the building regs with Part-P being electrical, Part-B fire safety, Part-F ventilation, Part-M access and mobility – well go look up the rest for yourselves. My point here is that a non-accredited kitchen fitter might install new circuits for sockets, lighting, a cooker or even change the CU and will notify absolutely bloody no-one under Part-P because nobody actually gives a flying fuck at the domestic level, and the failures of the building regulations remain because what some council loser who couldn’t get a proper job in construction and has to work in building control doesn’t know… isn’t going to trouble them.
Building control is underfunded, undermanned and underskilled, and will remain so both because there’s no extra public cash to throw at them and because the trend is to lower standards in construction to ensure new builds and renewables are kept corner cuttingly cheap.
All I have to do going forward is to be up-front with customers. So long as I don’t bullshit anyone about anything then we’ll all know where we stand. If their work is subject to building regulations, then I can offer three choices.
- 1. For major work such as an extension or new build, where a full-plans application is already being submitted, the electrical work can be included on that which means, if pre-approved, no subsequent notification is required despite what a CPS might otherwise claim.
- 2. I can hand such a job off to an accredited third-party of whom I personally approve, and who can allow me to bash on with the work so long as they support the design and oversee the progress. Effectively, I become their subby and on paper they take everything on the chin, even though in reality, I’m doing all the work. There’s nothing wrong with that and they can take a fee for the management and processing of the job. It’s not a blind sign-off of someone else’s work; it’s not even a third-party sign off. It’s attending to the task under the observation of another QS who is prepared to put their name to it afterwards.
- 3. My customer and I can have the understanding and agreement that Local Authority Building Control doesn’t get notified at all because there are already no consequences for the kitchen and bathroom fitters who fuck around with electrics, ventilation and who knows what else.
We have a system where the big guys can lobby for lower standards, the overseers who claim to be fighting for our industry consistently serve to lower the bar, unscrupulous operators generally face no penalties for shoddy work or for ripping people off and, as always, it’s we small-fry who do actually care for our customers and are striving to do a diligent job who face the penalties of higher costs, more red tape, and greater scrutiny. Yet it’s me, and many of my compatriots who are the very members NIC and NAPIT rely on to keep them in repute.
So, no more. If the system beats down the working man too much, then the working man says fuck the system. Fuck government meddling, fuck the pissant local council, fuck NAPIT, fuck NICEIC because all those assholes need we honest trades more than we ever needed the likes of them. The CPS operators are turning their own branding from a badge of confidence into a warning label. Well, they can go right ahead, but they’re not dragging my good name down with ‘em.
In the UK, you don’t have to be accredited with anyone to work as an electrician, so if I’m not forking over a ton of money to a bunch of shareholders who couldn’t care less about industry standards, then nobody gets to monitor what I’m doing, and that’s fine by me. It doesn't mean I’ll lower my standards, stop calibrating my equipment, cancel my insurance, stop attending courses or not keep my CPD updated, it simply releases me from the indignity of exposing myself to a process that seems desperate to catch me and my kind out on the pettiest of issues whilst simultaneously failing to police the real problems.
I think the biggest risk for my business may be the likes of letting agents, estate agents or solicitors refusing my certs or reports where there’s no CPS logo, but again, membership of such isn’t mandatory, I have the relevant insurance, and if push comes to shove, I have the bona fides to back up my authoritah or to defend myself in court under EAWR if my workmanship or reporting comes into question.
So, the NICEIC and me are no more from the end of March, although I am still issuing electrical certificates and reports, seeing as I’m qualified, insured and demonstrably quite capable of so doing.
But the recipient of such paperwork is perhaps going to want to see a logo other than my own, right? Because, half the time, a second logo adds weight even if it doesn’t add value, and for me, the NAPIT and NICEIC logos no longer have value.
Well, okay, I’m going to give you a logo, here’s the Independent Non-Accredited Electrical Contractor legend, a banner I’m happy to fly to show proud independence of these leech organisations.
There’s a little more under the bonnet as an accompanying website at INAEC.org exists, not to be confused with some Filipino commercial airline with the same initials, but this site gives homeowners and duty holders advice as to what to look for when choosing an electrician as well as allowing other sparks to make their own protest if they’ve had enough of this bullshit competent persons model.
The non-accredited logo doesn’t pretend to offer anything other than its face value unlike the bold point-of-sale claims of NAPIT and NICEIC who blab on about six-year workmanship warranties and reassuring peace of mind when, in fact, both schemes run good and bad contractors and are perceived to do little, if anything, to right the wrongs of a job going all to cock.
There’s talk in Scotland of making the job of Electrician protected where you effectively need a licence to practice. I’ve advocated for such in the past, but honestly, I hope that doesn’t happen here, the reason being, the UK government – any UK government – would fuck it up. They would simply hand the responsibility to NICEIC and NAPIT and say “you dickheads manage it”, and I don’t want to see a situation where a couple of private for-profit companies get to run the whole show. It would effectively be privatising who can join the electrical industry, and the only winners would be a bunch of suits wielding briefcases instead of toolboxes.
AFF1