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20. Recommendations


A Review of the Safety Regime for Electrical and Gas Work: Report

Ministry of Commerce/Occupational Safety and Health Service
[ Last Updated 3 February 2006 ]


275. The full set of recommendations of the review team is listed below.

Legislative Framework

  1. The HSE Act should be recognised as the primary legislation governing safety while electrical and gas work is being carried out within a place of work.
  2. Special purpose Acts (currently the Electricity, Gas, and PG&D Acts) are still needed to cover the safety of completed work, the continuing safety of the work, maintenance of electrical and gas appliances and fittings, and the safe use of electricity and gas.
  3. Additional control over electrical and gas hazards while the work is being carried out should be provided through regulations under the HSE Act where necessary.
  4. The agencies involved in administering all relevant legislation must develop clear procedures to ensure there is a seamless interface between the Acts, and consistent information and advice for the public and industry.
  5. The legislation should specify that: electrical and gas work should be done safely and left in a safe condition; people shall do only the work they are competent to do and shall be responsible for maintaining their competence; and that owners of assets are responsible for ensuring that their assets are maintained in a safe condition.
  6. The Electricity, Gas, and PG&D Acts should be redrafted to be consistent in wording and approach with each other and the provisions in the HSE Act wherever possible.

Licensing and Self-certification

  1. Because of the risks to the public, all prescribed electrical work and gasfitting on installations and electrical appliances should only be undertaken by those whose competence has been recognised by an independent licensing body.
  2. In other situations there should be no requirement to use licensed workers and the requirements of the HSE Act will be the primary means of ensuring safety.
  3. Owners of supply operations legally accessible to the public should be required to operate under a risk management system.
  4. The present system of self-certification is endorsed and consideration should be given to extending it to all electrical work carried out by licensed electrical workers.
  5. The Certificates of Compliance and the Electrical Safety Certificates should be collapsed into one system to avoid confusion.

Exemptions from Licensing

  1. The licensing regime should provide for organisations and individuals able to prove they have alternative means of ensuring safety to apply for an exemption from the requirement to use licensed workers.
  2. Existing provisions for work under supervision and for householders or similar to do defined work for themselves should be maintained.
  3. An exemption should be introduced to remove the anomaly that allows manufacturers to employ non-licensed workers to assemble appliances, but requires them to use licensed workers to repair them.
  4. The existing method of providing exemptions through prescriptive criteria that include requirements to follow particular instructions contained within Codes of Practice or Standards should be retained.
  5. The exemption process should be reviewed with the aim of:
    • improving the administration of the process; and
    • standardising it across electricity and gas.
  6. This review should include evaluating the justification for continuing with some of the current exemptions (e.g. "Person In Charge" exemption in the gas safety regime and "Qualified Electrical Engineer" in the electrical regime), and any changes required to make these exemptions more effective or to improve accountability.

Roles and Responsibilities

  1. An agency of central government should have a continuing responsibility for the overall monitoring of the supply and safe use of electricity and gas, and the safety and maintenance of electrical and gas appliances and fittings. It shall also be responsible for ensuring public input into competency and technical Standards. At present Commerce has this role.
  2. There will be a need for central Government to continue to facilitate the development of technical Standards on electricity and gas matters and provide public education about electrical and gas safety.
  3. Licensing for both electrical and gas work should be undertaken through independent self-funded statutory boards, removed from but accountable to, the relevant Minister.
  4. The primary functions of the licensing boards are recognising competency, facilitating on-going competency and disciplining workers where incompetent or unsafe work is found.
  5. Boards should be required to submit business plans to the Minister each year that would include specific proposals for ensuring the maintenance of competence within their occupational groups and for increasing safety levels. Boards would also be required to report on their performance in the following year, and make the plans and performance results public.

Worker Competence

  1. The present prescriptive requirements in legislation on the skills required for registration and safety training should be replaced by new more appropriate and flexible requirements established by the industry and ITOs with public input.
  2. Refresher safety training should continue to be compulsory for those involved in hazardous work and this requirement should be extended to cover gas workers. Means of ensuring compliance with this requirement should be explored further with the ITOs and boards, but could involve regulations under the HSE Act requiring certificates of competence.
  3. New Zealand ITOs should be encouraged to co-operate with Australian ones in the development of unit standards.

Improvement of Processes

  1. Processes which assist in monitoring the ongoing competency of workers (including audit processes) need improvement and should be reviewed as part of the implementation process.
  2. The conclusions of the work done by Commerce and EWRB on expediting and streamlining the complaints process should feed into the implementation process and be shared with the PG&D Board.
  3. The approach taken in the legislation to ensuring safety and the processes in the current HSE, Electricity, Gas, and PG&D Acts should be aligned as far as possible.

Accident Information

  1. The agencies involved in aspects of data collection in relation to electrical and gas accidents should develop a common approach to collecting data that would improve the comprehensiveness and usefulness of the data.
  2. One lead agency should have the responsibility for collecting, analysing and publishing the data for information and monitoring purposes.
  3. OSH should have the primary responsibility for investigating accidents in the workplace and should be the contact point for the industry notifying workplace accidents. OSH might then delegate the investigation to technical experts in other agencies, but there would be only one notification point for the industry or public.

Cost Implications

  1. There will need to be some transfers in funding and/or resources from Commerce to OSH so that OSH can take responsibility for work currently carried out by Commerce.
  2. Because the recommended changes to the legislation will have an impact upon consumer responsibilities, it is recommended that the Government undertake a publicity campaign in conjunction with the licensing boards to inform the public of the changed obligations applying to electrical work and to reinforce the previous reforms carried out in 1992.

Review of Penalties and Remedies

  1. The level of fines possible under the HSE Act should be reviewed and the results of this review fed into changes to the Electricity and Gas Acts.
  2. The maximum level of penalties in the Electricity and Gas Acts should be increased to provide stronger deterrents for unsafe behaviour.
  3. A wider range of penalties and remedies, including instant fines, should be made possible in the legislation.

Implementation

  1. The Energy Inspection Group of Commerce and OSH should co-ordinate a series of task groups working on the detailed implementation of the measures proposed in this report. The task groups should develop specific proposals for the legislative changes needed, in consultation with relevant industry interests, and report back to Cabinet by 30 March 2000.

Other

  1. The boards should be invited to explore the possibilities of joint administration of some functions.
  2. Consideration should be given to abolishing the concept of registration in favour of licensing, since licensing recognises current competence to carry out the work rather than competence only at the time the occupation was first entered.
  3. The anomaly in Section 18 of the HSE Act in relation to contractors' responsibilities for public safety while work is being carried out should by addressed.
  4. The use of demerit points along the lines of the Singapore Contractors Improvement Points system should be considered.
  5. More work should be done to identify a cost-effective means of ensuring the safety of installations connected to gas cylinders less than 15kg in weight.
  6. Appliance safety: Existing requirements for licensing and certification should be retained until further work is done on the level of risk from repair and maintenance of gas appliances.
  7. Licensing categories: Boards should review their categories of registration with the aim of making identification easier for users of electrical and gas services. The gas categories are particularly in need of amendment. A simplified version of the current classification system should be adopted.
  8. Boards should consider whether re-licensing on an annual basis is the most effective way of balancing administrative convenience, compliance costs on workers, and ensuring current competence.
  9. Legislation should make provision for the explicit recognition of licences from overseas which are sufficiently similar to those in New Zealand without the need for specific re-verification within New Zealand.
  10. Other trades incorporating electrical work: Options for either exempting competent workers from the licensing system or for recognising them through the licensing system need to be developed in consultation with the industry sectors involved.
  11. The provisions in NZECP11 on inspection and testing of existing installations should be reviewed and developed into a New Zealand Standard or other form that could be used by the public when purchasing a house or other installation.
  12. The current requirement on work requiring inspection should be reviewed to reduce the compliance costs associated with it. It may be appropriate for the inspection regime, if retained, to apply only where the recognised practices are not being followed.
  13. The Government should actively support projects and industry campaigns aimed at promoting the benefits of RCDs to the public.

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