We are in Cape town and do lots of compliance certificates and are not fly by night and take making a house safe seriously.Say Cape town as by laws might be an issue.
We been challenged on one job where a council Oostersee box was said to need to be made compliant by us as is on the property of the house we did a sans 10142 certificate for.They saying as we did not make council connection compliant our coc is not valid for the property.Fact is it is a very old house and no sign of council meter (must be locked away in road)

The issue is that there is no breakers on the council connection so if there is a dead short you need to call the council out to restore power on the road.We get that is best practise to have neutral bar etc and main breaker-so not arguing it is best practice to have these in the council oostersee box. Point is we could not switch off without calling council and we don't feel sans 10142 says that you need to put in a best practice connection in the council box. Granted if council box was unsafe we would flag it and make it safe (ie exposed live wires etc).To us this is council property and we talking about existing mostly old properties and not new council supply.

Our argument is :
-SAns 10142(our coc) starts at main distribution board of house and at point of control Ie main breaker.The point of supply is the council which is from outside the house.
-Which law in sans10142 gives us permission to work in council boxes and we want it in writing the council giving us permission to work in their boxes.We have had false tampering charges before and as a rule, don't work in council property as according to us don't have the permission.You can't selectively apply the law to work in council boxes as what if as in most cases the council supply is locked on the road? Do we need to open them to open up for us in each coc?If the council board is inside the property well surely the law should cover that and we should have permission to work in council boxes.


Any thoughts on the above from past experiences and which laws and not best practices force you to work in council board and that you have the permission for.Not arguing best practice we are arguing the law and looking to be proven wrong with the law in the context of sans10142.