Reading the last few comments on this thread I thought I'd throw myfew words in, recently a fellow electrician and I were discussing the regs and how sometimes there seems to be a change just for the sake of it, or in reality, just to create an excuse for a new edition and therefore raise money!
I pondered at the time the potential for just not bothering with new regs and carrying on as normal, as we know, they are for guidance only and not enforceable in law, and yes I know they are often the basis for prosecutions, but a lot of stuff hasn't changed over many years. Ok when I was a lad, a load of sockets on a loop was known as a ring main, then a ring circuit, now a ring final. However, when you look at it it's still a load of sockets on a loop of cable, yes there's been requirements to fit RCD's, which is not always a good thing, because back in the day they were secondary protection, now they've become a primary method, hurrah, I hear some people cry, now we don't have to worry about getting that loop value down lower, which was one reason RCD's used to be fitted.
When you look at the bigger picture, very little has changed over the last 40 years regarding circuits, ok we now use LED's a lot instead of filament lamps, but fundamentally the circuit is still the same, Showers got bigger, 10mm is common now whereas years ago 6mm, and in the early days 4mm was the norm, the same thing with cookers, so why do we need to fork out nearly a hundred quid on a book only to find after reading it cover to cover, that very little has changed?
No!, I am all for anything that puts the brakes on the gravy train that is the IEE wiring regs, plus another thing, apart from proving you can read, what else does it prove? It has to be the only exam I know where you can take the book of answers in with you, all you do is look up the answer to the question.Now, I suspect that, like me, you all passed an English exam at school, this effectively said that you knew how to read and write, so why do we need to pay stupid money to do a regs exam, it's simply to supply the gravy train.Lets make no bones about it, if you didn't know what you were doing then your clients would soon get worried if you spent half the job looking in a book for the answers, so how does sitting in a room with an exam paper in one hand and a book of answers in the other actually prove anything, it doesn't, except the fact that you can read, I rest my case.