An electricians’ trade association has called for changes in Building Regulations after a court heard how a woman died after being electrocuted.

Mother of one, 22-year-old Emma Shaw, died while dealing with a boiler leak. The electrical circuits in her flat in West Bromwich had previously been signed off as ‘problem-free’.

The National Association of Professional Inspectors and Testers (NAPIT) said the court case at Wolverhampton Crown Court highlighted longstanding concerns over the Qualified Supervisor (QS) model.

The court found Qualified Supervisor Neil Hoult guilty of one count of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act which led to the death of Emma Shaw, a verdict which has highlighted the dangers inherent in the controversial approach to recognising electrical competence.

The incident occurred in 2007 after Hoult of Anchor Electrical and Building Services had deemed the circuit safe, failing to identify that circuit 3 had been penetrated by a screw that had caused the metal frame behind a wall to become energised at mains voltage, 230 volts.

His colleague, an unqualified “electricians mate” Christopher Tomkins, 52, also of Anchor Electrical and Building Services, had described himself in police interviews as an “electricians mate… not qualified to act as a test inspector”. He was alleged to have filled out a form to show that circuits had been tested but was found not guilty and acquitted of one count of failing to discharge a duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
The judge told supervisor Neil Hoult: “You have been convicted of a grave breach of duty. The testing of electrical circuits is absolutely vital. You were responsible for the failures in checking paperwork. Because of your failures and those of others who created this situation, you failed to detect a metal stud frame behind a plaster board at the house was live for a period of some 18 months. There was a leak in the boiler, the water soaked the carpet and that too became live and led to the inevitable death of Emma Shaw.”
Neil Hoult, 53, the Qualified Supervisor responsible for checking the safety of Tomkins’ work was found guilty by the jury of one count of failure to discharge a duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act and ordered to pay a £1,000 fine, the only penalty available under the Act.

The final verdict of this long running case lends weight to the recent recommendation by the Communities and Local Government Select Committee who recently investigated the Building Regulations Certification of domestic electrical work and recommended that competence requirements should be rolled out within five years for all those doing electrical work to which Part P applies.

Commenting on the verdict, NAPIT Trade Association Chairman, Frank Bertie, said:

“The NAPIT Trade Association has consistently opposed the industry model of focussing on a Qualified Supervisor, a model which runs too great a risk of work being completed by installers who may be neither properly trained nor genuinely monitored.

“The evidence heard during the trial and the guilty verdict that followed suggests Mr Tomkins was not properly trained and that was he was not genuinely monitored by Mr Hoult during what should have been a routine test.

“Lack of reasonable care by Hoult in particular ultimately brought about the untimely death of Emma Shaw. However, the requirements of the competence landscape at the time also played their part in the tragedy. If Tomkins had been required to be fully qualified or Hoult had not been permitted to sign off the work of his colleague without directly supervising it, things may have turned out differently.

“Thankfully, progress towards rectifying this dangerous practice is being made in the form of recent recommendations by the CLG Select Committee to require all qualified supervisors to meet the standards, including qualifications, set out in the DCLG Conditions of Authorisation for Competent Person Schemes within the next ten years.  The final verdict of this long running case clearly emphasises the need for change and the NAPIT Trade Association urge the Government to act decisively to introduce individual competence.”