Quote Originally Posted by QUINN View Post
In terms of Regulation 7(5) "the user or lessor may not allow change in ownership if the Certificate of Compliance is older than two years".
What does this mean and how is this meant to be enforced? While the previous regulations did not have a similar provision, there was an urban legend you could not transfer a dwelling without a Certificate of Compliance. The provision of a Certificate of Compliance was often a condition in an agreement of sale of a dwelling, but was not compulsory. The old regulations did not provide that certificates were only valid for two years.

Is limiting the validity to two years scientifically justifiable?
Well, Bobby Bertrand is wrong in one aspect - it wasn't an urban legend that you needed a Certificate of Compliance to transfer ownership, but the introduction of the two years validity clause is worthy of some careful consideration.

Previously a Certificate of Compliance was valid as long as there was no change to the installation. My point on this was that changes to the installation could either be known (owner or user makes a change to the installation) or unknown (some component goes faulty or there is some other change to the conditions of the installation that could only be established by means of proper testing).

I suggest that these possibilities remain, but the question of framing the validity of the electrical COC in terms of time has been regularly raised. Clearly this is an attempt to resolve that question and should probably be seen as some sort of compromise on the issue.

My concern now is that the clause will be misinterpreted to suggest that a COC can be blindly relied on as valid for two years. The potential for changes as suggested above still exist, and I suggest should still be taken into account when considering accepting a COC for the purposes of transfer. And read carefully, the new regulation does not suggest otherwise. It merely frames an outer limit but does not preclude the potential need for a new COC earlier.

To reinforce the point, our experience is that the greatest changes and biggest problems occur when someone has bought and sold again in short order, normally after effecting some renovations or changes to flip the property for a profit.

Thus I still recommend play it safe - get a full test and new COC for each transfer. The cost of this is trivial compared to the potential consequences of failing to do so.