So what do we do to fight the malaise within the trade Gavin?.
Assuming this question was genuine, here's some thoughts on the subject fwiw.
1 - Don't mislead people from the outset into taking action that could land them in trouble, that's a really really bad starting point.
2 - If you want to launch a campaign of disobedience, persuading sparks to dump the scams and either make individual agreements with their LA building control depts, or just to opt out entirely of the notifications process, then do it, but be upfront about the potential risks involved so that everyone goes into it with their eyes wide open.
3 - Really though, getting sparks to sign up for something akin to a building control notifications strike if their demands aren't met might be a more sensible approach in terms of actually getting anything to change than just persuading a few sparks to withdraw from the schemes without even telling the schemes that was what they were doing.
4 - Have some realistic demands to make, clearly articulate what they are and why, and accept that the schemes in one guise or other aren't just going to go away, and neither are the tens of thousands of working electricians out there who don't meet the ideal levels of qualifications / apprentice training set out by some in this thread.
IME the schemes are getting stricter, eg NAPIT now insisting that our head electrician needs 2391 / 2394 on top of his NVQ level 3, AM2 and apprentice training. Even though I didn't go down that route myself, I'd definitely prefer a system that really enabled employers to recruit properly trained, skilled and experienced electricians and be sure that's what they were getting, and would support a system that properly certified individual electricians at various skill levels rather than just entire companies being certified (I'm aware I probably just described JIB), as well as a lot more enforcement whenever obviously dangerous situations were sent to them, as well as more random spot checks.
The problem though with insisting on all electricians being fully apprentice trained etc is the huge lack of proper apprentice placements over the last 20 years or so, and the sheer number of experienced electricians out there now in a fairly senior role who themselves didn't go down the apprenticeship route, and can't therefore really offer the same level of quality of apprenticeships as was apparently the case in the past even if they wanted to. The clock can't just be turned back as many here seem to wish for, you may not want this to be the starting point for the industry, but it's where the industry is at now, so any plan to improve the situation would really need to work out how to improve the situation from this starting point from rather than just attempting to turn the clock back.
To put that into perspective, at our last inspection I had a chat with the inspector about this sort of thing, and IIRC he thought that 90% of sparks working in the domestic side of the industry, wouldn't meet the sort of competency requirements people on this thread would apparently want them to all have before being considered a qualified spark. That's not to say that 90% of sparks aren't reasonably competent, just that a lot of them haven't followed the prescribed apprenticeship route into the trade, often because it wasn't available to them.
So if you're going to be realistic about this, you'd have to accept that 90% of sparks on CPS books aren't going to just accept being told they can no longer work in the industry, and they'd have to go and join the 16 year olds on a 3 years apprenticeship if they want to work in the industry again, neither are the employers, or anyone else as the entire industry would grind to a halt with the overnight loss of 90% of working sparks from the domestic side of the industry.
I'm waffling a bit, but a couple of ideas on what could improve the situation would be
1 - Individual certification as happens with the gas safe scheme, and this does certify gas engineers to be able to work up to different sizes of boilers, so could certify sparks to different levels / different aspects of the industry.
2 - All new sparks registering to be apprentice trained, and employers given proper assistance to increase the number of apprentices taken on and given meaningful apprenticeships, or if they've only completed the equivalent course with no practical experience, to be granted some sort of trainee accreditation that meant they could only work under supervision for the first 3-5 years or so to at least stop newly trained people without any practical experience from setting up as a one man band the day after getting their certificates.
3 - Existing sparks who don't meet those competency requirements to have a training plan agreed to bring them up to the required standards, potentially including having someone else more competent inspect and test their works for a period of time / set number of installations / until inspection and testing qualifications were gained.
4 - Copies of all test sheets to be submitted to the competent persons schemes along with the building control notifications.
5 - Competent persons schemes to be made jointly liable for the work carried out by the sparks that are registered with them, and to effectively have a role as an ultimate quality supervisor in checking the test sheets submitted to them, sending back falsified test sheets, carrying out random inspections, and having a real incentive to kick sparks out who were carrying out dangerous work that they would be jointly liable for.
6 - Fully qualified, time served sparks to be able to register occasional domestic work directly with building control by submission of test certificates for a minimal fee providing they have xyz qualifications / experience.
something along those lines, but that's really just off the top of my head as a starting point, I'm aware that others have come up with their own versions of that list.
I don't see how simply withdrawing from the schemes entirely without any form of replacement for building control notification is anything other than a license for the real rogue traders to be more able to get away with doing the same thing, though I understand the frustration with seeing what the schemes seem quite happy to allow to go on unchallenged.
