Why use a registered electrician?
The UK has a comparatively good record of electrical safety, although around 2.5 million adults aged 18-65 experience an electric shock every year1. Based on electric injuries received in the past five years, this resulted in nearly 1.2 million significant injuries (exclude mild pains and unspecified conditions) and 200,000 hospital admissions annually2.
Although many incidents are caused by faulty appliances rather than the electrical installation itself, a properly-installed and well-maintained installation could save lives.
It is important therefore that electrical installation work is carried out only by persons who are competent. Such persons are those that have the necessary knowledge, skill and experience to enable them to avoid dangers to themselves and others that electricity can create. It's easy to make an electrical circuit work - it's far harder to make the circuit work safely.
Safety for you in your home is paramount and therefore the Electrical Safety Council strongly recommends that you use an electrician registered with one of the government-approved schemes to carry out any electrical installation work you need done.
Registered electricians will work to the UK national standard, BS 7671, and will issue a safety certificate for their electrical work to confirm that the installation has been designed, constructed, and inspected and tested in accordance with the national electrical safety standard, BS 7671 - Requirements for Electrical Installations.
All of the scheme operators will have a complaints procedure whereby they investigate complaints about registered electricians that may not have complied with the appropriate technical standard.
1Conducted by Ipsos MORI using a nationally representative quota sample across Great Britain. The results have been weighted to reflect the known profile of the adult population in Great Britain. Based on a confidence interval of +/- 3.5% and the sample size of 809 the actual number could vary between c1.3 and 4 million adults aged 15+. Electric shock is defined as a mains-voltage electric shock rather than a static shock of the type a person might get from a car, for example.
21024 adults aged 18-65 in Great Britain who have personally experienced an electric shock that resulted in injury while at home or in the garden in the past five years, including all those who experience one or more of the following injuries: skin burn without scarring, severe pain, bruising from a fall or severe muscular contraction, persistent pain numbness, difficulty in breathing, heart-beat disturbances/ irregularities, skin burn with scarring, higher blood pressure, deep tissue burn, broken bone(s), angina, temporary blindness, cardiac arrest.
