A Coventry electrician has been fined for shoddy work that left a live parts of a fusebox exposed.

Ron Moore was trading as RT Electrics when he carried out the work two years ago.

Trading standards officers decided to investigate Moore following a string of complaints.

Customers, left unprotected by a loophole in the law that prevents inept electricians being prosecuted, had mainly contacted Moore for small jobs via his advert in the Coventry Evening Telegraph.

Some people had complained that the work he had carried out in their houses was dreadful. But reports of live wires being left exposed, damage done to a house in an attempt to rewire it and other shoddy work could not be prosecuted.

Trading standards officers were able, however to bring charges for two offences.

Principle Trading Standards Officer Manjit Dhaliwal said:

“The law is very restricted in terms of electricians. It is not like gas, where you have to be Corgi registered to work.”

Moore initially pleaded not guilty to a count under the Trade Descriptions Act.

He had claimed that some wiring work at a house in Jubilee Crescent, Radford, conformed to regulations, when they did not.

And a consumer unit, or fuse box, installed in a house in Earlsdon had alive plate exposed. It should have been covered up.

Moore had successfully asked for the case to be moved to Wolverhampton Crown Court after arguing that press coverage of the work he carried out that was not the subject of the criminal case would prejudice his trial.

But at his trial last week he changed his plea to guilty. A third charge, covering a second breach of the Trade Description Act was dropped.