NICEIC and NAPIT would dearly like to see some kind of 'licence to practice' come into force for UK electricians as they would surely get the gig to run it, after which they could impose fees of whatever they wanted and would perhaps insist on members regularly ponying up for in-house courses and software licences to ensure maximum money is extracted for their own coffers. They, and a selection of other interested parties largely, but not always, keen to cash in, are enforcing changes in 2026 which will make it more difficult and expensive for contractors to retain their membership, all under the guise of raising standards to flush out the rogue traders.
Worthy though that might sound, there are three fundamental issues...
Issue #1: Many see the likes of NICEIC and NAPIT as being responsible for allowing standards to slip in the first place.
To bolster their own membership numbers, alongside their revenue, the CPS operators, have for many years, seemingly snapped up new entrants to the trades, while they were still wide-eyed and blinking, fresh out of college or overpromised short retraining courses, and with apparently little care as to whether such raw recruits were fit for purpose to be released into the industry. More recently, things have been tightened up somewhat, although that's probably less to do with clearing off any rogues from their books and rather to address the brand damage from giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up to an army of iffy installers who they have allowed to pour forth into the world whilst flying their colours.
The CPS's are still perceived as ticking off terrible workmanship to this day, with examples easily found on new builds, EV charging installations and in the renewable sectors especially. Unfortunately, CPS's are run for profit and aren't financially incentivised to lose members, even the bad ones, so it's common to hear rumblings of the belief that a blind eye has, and continues, to be turned, especially toward larger organisations in construction who hold some clout and want to cut costs by cutting corners.
It is also the case that the likes of local councils will insist on CPS accreditation for maintenance or inspection work on their public buildings and social housing, using this as the sole means of evaluation, yet oftentimes they themselves lack the budget to call in a quality contractor. What is regularly reported as happening is that a CPS registered firm will do the job cheaply and with partly, or wholly fabricated test data on their certification and reporting, yet the public body is happy so long as they recognise the logo on the submitted paperwork. You don't have to look too hard on social media for firms advertising for operatives to perform five electrical inspections per day for social housing, when someone doing the job diligently would perhaps fit in two... at best.
Each CPS offers an insurance backed warranty; NICEIC call it their 'Platinum Promise' while NAPIT's is their 'Work Quality Guarantee'. Both supposedly cover bad workmanship, yet they're flawed because if a contractor has performed a bad job to the point that a disgruntled and concernd homeowner is now making a formal complaint to their contractor's CPS, then under the terms of these guarantees, that same contractor has to be invited back to make good the very workmanship they shouldn't have buggered up in the first place. Obviously, most homeowners won't want the shoddy guy they've fallen out with let back into their home, invariably with dogshit on his shoes and a chip on his shoulder, so that's where the warranty dies with the CPS's feebly saying "Hey, we tried!" The troubling truth is that a diligent contractor cannot report on another member whose workmanship is poor or even downright dangerous. There's no whistleblowing.
That's not to say a claim cannot be made under these supposedly gilt-edged guarantees by a homeowner, but it's often either unlikely or awkward, and complaints against members tend to get resolved behind closed doors without any apology or recompense required for the poor sap who got ripped off. No CPS is about to throw real money at anybody's cock-up being uncocked if they can help it.
Issue #2: Nothing ever gets done about the real rogue traders or the off-trade skankers.
The CPS model means only those paying to be policed get policed. Each CPS monitors its own members; they have no authority over anyone else. Someone who is outside of any CPS can still blag at being an electrician, but if they do a shoddy job and run off with the money then it's up to the victim to seek a private prosecution or to report it to the police or Trading Standards, both of which are generally undermanned and underfunded and invariably don't do anything unless the complaints are plentiful and the losses high. A CPS might get involved if someone is openly deceitful by pretending to be a member and using their logo illegitimately, but going to the legal effort of forcing someone to stop such misrepresentation is probably expensive and time consuming. NICEIC used to have a 'wall of shame' to list the firms falsely using their branding who they seemed powerless to stop, but that has since been deleted - perhaps because it served as an admission of failure on their part to protect their own intellectual property.
As for work that is notifiable under Part-P of the Building Regulations, the rapscallions who do half a job and take all the money simply won't bother telling Local Authority Building Control about it leaving the council none the wiser and a homeowner without the required certification paperwork. But, again, LABC are undermanned and underfunded and the most they'll often do, if they ever get wind of it at all, is require a legitimate electrical inspector to either pass or fail things at the homeowner's expense without any fines or consequences ever being levied on the shyster who made the mess and caused all the trouble in the first place.
There are also third-party trades such as builders and kitchen/bathroom fitters who alter electrics within dwellings and whose work often comes under Part-P, yet they operate outside of any CPS and LABC never go after them. If a homeowner does question the lack of any certification paperwork, then these trades tend to play it dumb by stating they're not electricians and don't have to provide it. This is as ironic as it is stupid; there is no situation where a tradesperson can modify your electrics but claim it's not subject to certification or planning law because they're not actually an electrician! Anyone who can't certify their additions or alterations shouldn't be dicking around with the electrics in the first place.
Most sparks who do belong to a CPS, especially the smaller outfits, are in it for a diligent job and a happy customer - one who will call on them again in the future and tell their friends and family of their positive experience. Many such tradespeople are not out to rip anybody off, yet they're the very ones under the greatest scrutiny simply because they're already paying to be playing by the rules.
Issue #3: The CPS bodies are demanding some of the best people on their books now undertake expensive training or competence tests to prove they can do the job.
While ensuring Continued Professional Development (CPD) is worthy, it comes across as something of a nonsense when the CPS operators have themselves been overseeing long standing members for years without concern or complaint, yet they now seek quite extensive evidence and training to be undertaken to prove that those same members can do what they've traditionally been doing. As an example, someone who has been performing electrical inspections for years, based on qualifications gained a decade or more ago, and also having a trained eye for the history and condition of what they're inspecting & testing, may now find such work removed from their CPS scope unless they throw considerable time and money toward sitting the latest course. It's arguably a frivolous exercise to gain a piece of paper to say that a person can do the job - a job the CPS has accepted that member as being capable of doing for quite some time and who has monitored and signed off that member as diligently undertaking said work for goodness know how long since. Others who perhaps have built up an established business installing technologies such as solar PV, which requires recertification every five years, may find that they cannot now renew their accreditation because, without a particular piece of paper, training providers may bar them from attending the courses required to maintain their accreditation.
In many cases, people will have undertaken courses in past years that were accepted by the industry at the time but are now suddenly ruled as insufficient, with demands made for them to 'level up'. While a line in the sand stipulating the minimum requirements for electrical work is laudable, it seems to ignore the years of on-site experience people would have gained since. It is not the case that anybody who took a course that was acceptable in 2015 has learned nothing on the job over the past decade, and time out in the field will count for much more than any noob who has just qualified and holds a "certificate" stating they're somehow better.
If any given route into the industry was acceptable in the past, then with the years of practical experience that would be under the belt of someone who took that route, especially with ongoing evidence of CPD, it is clearly a nonsense to move the goalposts in 2026. To now say that their paperwork is no longer up to muster, resulting perhaps in denial of membership or the ability to take new training to people already running established and successful businesses is ridiculous.
As is usually the case, this isn't down to the likes of NICEIC and NAPIT directly, rather it comes from government pen-pushers who have no idea how the world works down at the coalface. Tightening up requirements in this way doesn't help the trades, or benefit the public - it merely tangles honest, legitimate contractors in hopeless red-tape while making it all too expensive for everyone except the cowboys who never did care and aren't held to account anyway.
Starting in 2026, Qualified Supervisors (which is pretty much any one-person outfit) will need to have a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ). While many may already have such, this hits two groups of people particularly hard: those going through adult retraining, with the intention of opening their own business, will now struggle to find the time and money to ever get the evidence needed to become accredited, and the older, seasoned spark for whom NVQ perhaps stood for Not Very Qualified, because back when they left school, life in the trades was what they were perhaps pushed into if they weren't suited to higher education.
While nobody is suggesting the grey-haired old guard go back to the classroom to gain a NVQ, they will now be expected to haul themselves through the Experienced Worker Route, which is a costly procedure requiring a portfolio of evidence be produced to show they can maintain their role. Many an electrical veteran near the end of their working career will likely choose to retire or to give up rather than jump through such hoops, thus depriving the industry of knowledgeable and skilled workers.
Once again, the small outfits run by one or two people will be hardest hit: they'll be under greater scrutiny, forced to undertake expensive courses to prove they know how to do what they're already doing. They'll find that the industry gets fragmented further into 'bolt-ons' whereby if they want to install a particular technology, they may be denied under their existing CPS membership unless they pay extra to their for-profit and desk-based overseer. Meanwhile, the cowboys can carry on regardless; unmonitored and unchallenged as nobody polices those who are under the radar. The big outfits, who might only have a handful of Qualified Supervisors covering hundreds of operatives, still won't be held to task - they will continue to go around installing new houses, renewables or EV chargepoints that will automatically fail the next inspection when it finally comes around because none of it was ever properly installed to BS7671 in the first place.
If industry standards have slipped, then it's been right under the noses of the very organisations who insist their logo is the sign of quality. Dissatisfaction within the industry is high and many are choosing to disassociate their businesses from those bodies who don't offer the reassurance the CPS's perhaps claim. So, with that in mind, let's take a deep dive into the shallow end of electrical logos one may come across when appointing an electrical contractor in the next chapter...
