And yet again oddly enough strengthening local government, funding it and getting building inspectors back and able to catch the offenders is not on the menu, just makework tickbox compliance, more money to the boys in the compliance department, the "professional" bodies and the usual suspects.

It's a consultation about retrofit consumer protection not local government.  From a fairly quick read it seems pretty comprehensive and fairly sensible, although the devil will certainly be in the implementation detail.  It brings back into public control much of the 'protection' that has been privatised to the industry itself and thus devalued, and which people on here repeatedly complain about. 

I would suggest it's a good start and we could be making constructive comments

Posted by: @jamespa

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Yet again?  Local government has been weakened almost fatally over the last 15 years.  The rest of what you say may be true (or may not, I haven't read it yet) but 'yet again' emphatically is not!

I might be misunderstanding either you, @jamespa or @etchedpixels, but my impression was that @etchedpixels was saying:

• any bolstering of local government or local resources is not on the agenda in the consultation
• that this consultation is not the first time local government and resources have been ignored (i.e. "yet again").

Is that not what you're also saying?

A work colleague has an ongoing case with a ECO install. I think they're about to take the council to court. 

@majordennisbloodnok 

I reread the original post and now understand the same as you.  I have amended .my post to read:

Posted by: @jamespa

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It's a consultation about retrofit consumer protection not local government.  From a fairly quick read it seems pretty comprehensive and fairly sensible, although the devil will certainly be in the implementation detail.  It brings back into public control much of the 'protection' that has been privatised to the industry itself and thus devalued, and which people on here repeatedly complain about. 

I would suggest it's a good start and we could be making constructive comments

I would add that IMHO it's right that consumer protection for central government schemes, which is what primarily this consultation is about, lies with central government.  Splitting it and giving the protection to local government means that one tier of government devises the scheme and another polices it, leading to ambiguous accountability.

Would disagree - you need both bits.

Central management to understand trends and policy requirements. Local government to do effective enforcement on the ground. Agreed on clear lines of accountability and purpose.

Just look how councils putting the boot in with their new HMO powers has gotten dodgy landlords actually selling up or frantically sorting compliance.

The fix to many of the ills of the building trade and the retrofit trade, and dodgy sparkies and so on is to make sure that anyone in the business knows that people who did the job wrong (and here I mean intentionally so and not technical compliance issues where BC told them to put in another joist etc) got locked up or fined a lot.

I would further add that there will likely be a fair number of local authorities that would not want to take on consumer protection for schemes they did not devise, and another tranche which will want them to fail, or at least not be bothered if they do, to make a political point.  So I think it's easy to understand and support the responsibility being returned to the funder and scheme authority, IE central government, which is what is proposed 

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Central management to understand trends and policy requirements. Local government to do effective enforcement on the ground. Agreed on clear lines of accountability and purpose.

I would expect most topics can be governed at central government level. If there is some real difference due to local requirements, one option would be additional local governance. But it would ve better that the requirements are fed to central via the MP or whatever. Otherwise any local government prone to protectionist measures may lean in favour of only having local tradespeople doing work in their boroughs, etc.  

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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The fix to many of the ills of the building trade and the retrofit trade, and dodgy sparkies and so on is to make sure that anyone in the business knows that people who did the job wrong (and here I mean intentionally so and not technical compliance issues where BC told them to put in another joist etc) got locked up or fined a lot.

Absolutely. This is where a proper ID system is essential, so the "crime" cannot be easily repeated. The worst case that we experienced with tradespeople, they were very local and knew how to navigate and evade regulations and authorities. They used simple mechanisms such as a trading name that was not a real company, common shortnames, etc. 

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Central management to understand trends and policy requirements. Local government to do effective enforcement on the ground. Agreed on clear lines of accountability and purpose.

I agree with much of that, but that's a much wider reform of the relationship between national and local government. 

However I would also say that whichever tier of government designs a programme of any type should also police it otherwise there is no clear line of accountability.  So I would be happy for central government to either ask or empower local government to design a local scheme and police it, or for Central Government to design a scheme and police it, or for local government to design a scheme and police it, but not an unholy mix of the two where each, quite likely (and rightly) of different political persuasion, will inevitably blame any problems on the other.  You can't expect anyone effectively to police (and psychologically 'own') something they did not design.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Just look how councils putting the boot in with their new HMO powers has gotten dodgy landlords actually selling up or frantically sorting compliance.

Yes indeed, in this case government gave the councils the power both to design and police hmo licencing schemes so the two are aligned as described above.  Councils are not asked to police a scheme designed by central government because central government has not designed a scheme only provided powers to do so.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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The fix to many of the ills of the building trade and the retrofit trade, and dodgy sparkies and so on is to make sure that anyone in the business knows that people who did the job wrong (and here I mean intentionally so and not technical compliance issues where BC told them to put in another joist etc) got locked up or fined a lot.

I would agree with better enforcement of BC issues.