A neighbor had EDF out a couple of days ago to investigate frequent flickering and brown-outs, and I ended up chatting with the engineer about the recent problem described in this thread, among other things.

As to be expected, the first thing he did to test was remove the meter terminal cover at my neighbor's house and monitor the voltage while asking for some loads to be turned on.

But before he did that, he filled out a load of forms which turned out to be the now-ubiquitous risk assessment. Apparently he is now required to fill in these darned forms for each and every little task, no matter how simple.

I'm all for working safely, but to my mind this is getting ridiculous. How many times a week must he remove the terminal cover from a domestic meter and check the voltage? Dozens. If he isn't aware of the dangers by now, he's never going to be.

So what is the point of requiring a risk assessment report for every single time he has to do something this simple?

No wonder people complain about this country being strangled by red-tape and bureaucracy. frown