This latest Edition of the lEE Wiring Regulations was published in May 1991. It was permissible to use the 15th Edition for installations put into service before January 1st, 1993. However, from now onwards the 16th Edition must be used. The current trend is to move towards a set of wiring regulations with world-wide application. IEC publication 364 'Electrical Installations of Buildings' has been available for some time, and the 16th Edition is based on many of its parts. The European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) uses a similar pattern to IEC 364 and to the Wiring Regulations.

The introduction of the Free European Market in 1993 might well have caused serious problems for UK electrical contractors because whilst the lEE Wiring Regulations were held in high esteem, they had no legal status which would require Continentals who were carrying out installation work in the UK to abide by them. This difficulty was resolved in October 1992 when the lEE Wiring Regulations became a British Standard, BS 7671, giving them the required international standing.

It does not follow that an agreed part of lEG 364 will automatically become part of the IEE Wiring Regulations. For example, the lEE Wiring Regulations Committee is unable to agree with international rules which allow the installation of sockets in bathrooms, and so sockets are not allowed in these situations when we follow the 16th Edition.

BS 7671 recognises all harmonised standards (or Harmonised Documents, HDs) which have been agreed by all member states of the European Union. BS EN standards are harmonised standards based on harmonised documents and are published without addition to or deletion from the original HDs. When a BS EN is published the relevant BS is superseded and is withdrawn. A harmonised standard eg BS 7671, may have additions but not deletions, from the original standard. lEG and CENELEC publications follow the pattern which will be shown in {1.2.3}, and it is not always easy to find which Regulations apply to a given application. For example, if we need to find the requirements for bonding, there is no set of Regulations with that title to which we can turn. Instead, we need to consider five separate parts of the Regulations, which in this case are:

1 [Chapter 131 Regulation [130-04-01],
2 [Section 413] Regulations [413-02-15, 413-02-27 & 413-02-29],
3 [Section 514] Regulation [514-13-01],
4 [Section 541] complete, and
5 [Section 547] complete.

The question arises 'how do we know where to look for all these different Regulations'? The answer is two-fold. First, the Regulations themselves have a good index. Second, this Electrician's Guide also has a useful index, from which the applicable sub-section can be found. At the top of each sub-section is a list of all applicable Regulations.

The detail applying to a particular set of circumstances is thus spread in a number of parts of the Regulations, and the overall picture can only be appreciated after considering all these separate pieces of information. This Guide is particularly useful in drawing all this information together.