[Hampshire] OT: Part-P rant

Maybe I don't understand, but as I see it Electricians and the IEE must be
great at lobbying the government to create this legally required money
making scheme :(

I wish to run a spur in my house, I know what I'm doing where I want to
run it and I am sure that it is the only spur on that particular ring
circuit so there won't be any problems.

However I am now legally obliged to ensure that work I carry out is
compliant with Part P of the building regs, which in turn requires that
all work is carried out to comply with British Standard 7671.

Although I have DIY books describing how the work should be done, these
were published before Part P and although I am 99% certain they are
correct, the only way to be certain is to check the standard.

However to check the standard I either have to buy it, £54 from amazon :(,
or find a copy somewhere I can reference (maybe my local Library? no luck
my nearest copy is reference only 15 miles away in the middle of
winchester, which isn't very helpful!)

Of course this is supposedly to improve safety, but if I was the sort of
person that was going to do a shoddy installation and not care about the
impact, I would just ignore all this and wire the house up dangerously
anyway, the wiring would be behind walls and probably impossible to trace
back to and prove it was me that did the work anyway.

So I'm stuck with 3 choices, all of which suck:

1) Do the work anyway and hope it is correct (not ideal, despite my
annoyance I do want to ensure the work I do is safe)
2) Pay someone else to do it (who in my experience will end up doing a
worse job that if I did it myself)
3) Spend large amounts of time / money finding out the right way to do it.

Why on earth is there a requirement to do electrical work in my own house
that requires me to follow rules which are not freely available! I can't
believe there is a law which says: "you must not break the rules, but we
won't let you know what those rules are until you hand over money".

Grrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers, Rant over, I feel better now :)

Steve