Part one of a two part miniseries focusing on the new fourth edition of the Code of Practice from the IET.
The fourth edition of the IET Code of Practice has been designed to ensure that those responsible for the maintenance and testing of appliances fully understand the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989.
This updated version of the Code of Practice follows the same position established by the Lofstedt report on Health and Safety. In this report concern was expressed that the legal requirement for maintaining these appliances was being too rigorously adhered to causing over compliance.
The new edition of the Code of Practice focuses more on the importance of taking a proportionate response to the need to ensure that appliance are maintained.
Therefore, the fourth edition has been expanded to include more electrical equipment categories, workplaces and more detailed explanations. However, one of the main focuses is the importance of taking a structured approach to risk assessments to decide on the length of time between testing for each appliance.
This means that now equipment maintenance needs to be based on the risks individual electrical items pose. Therefore equipment can be managed and tested only once it has been assessed.
This risk assessment approach is, however not entirely new, there was always an encouragement of risk based assessment but it has not been as clearly defined and focused as in this version of the IET Code of Practice.
Also, duty holders have a legal responsibility to ensure that their equipment is safe and it is now their responsibility to decide when and how often testing of these appliances should take place. They are allowed to take advice from their PAT technician on this, but they are under no obligation to follow this advice.
Written by Sara Thomson
