Landlords tend to meet electrical safety as a document: a report, a date, a box ticked. Underneath the document sits a small stack of standards that decide what the report says, who may do the work, and what counts as good enough. Understanding that stack is what turns compliance from an annual scramble into something you can plan and budget.
The three things that actually apply
First, the rented-sector duty. In England, the fixed electrical installation in a rented home must be inspected and tested at least every five years, under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020. That produces the EICR.
Second, the technical standard. Installations are designed, installed and inspected to BS 7671 — the IET Wiring Regulations. This is the rulebook the electrician is actually working to. It is not law in itself; it is the recognised standard against which electrical work is judged, and departing from it needs justification.
Third, Building Regulations Part P. Electrical work in dwellings falls under Part P, which means certain work is notifiable and must be certified. In practice this determines who can lawfully carry out a new circuit in your flat and what paperwork you should be handed at the end.
Those three are the whole frame. Everything else — codes, certificates, schedules — hangs off them.
"Satisfactory" is a lower bar than people assume
An EICR says satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Landlords hear "satisfactory" as "fine". It is narrower than that. Satisfactory means the inspector found nothing dangerous or potentially dangerous, and nothing needing further investigation. It does not mean the installation is modern, or good, or that it will pass in five years' time.
The model report classifies observations. Broadly: danger present; potentially dangerous; improvement recommended; and further investigation required. The first two, and the last, are what make a report unsatisfactory. The improvement-recommended category does not — and this is where the interesting decisions live. A report can be satisfactory and still be carrying a list of things that a sensible owner would deal with, because the installation is not dangerous today but is drifting.
Ask your electrician to talk you through the codes rather than emailing you the report. Anyone unwilling to do that is selling a document rather than doing an inspection.
Old installations are not automatically non-compliant
This is the most misunderstood point in the whole subject, and it costs landlords money in both directions.
BS 7671 is amended regularly. An installation put in twenty years ago was built to the standard of its day. The fact that it does not meet the current edition does not, by itself, make it dangerous or make the report unsatisfactory. An inspector judges condition and safety, not fashion. Plenty of older installations in Central London flats are perfectly serviceable.
The flip side is that some departures from the current standard genuinely are dangerous, and age is a reasonable predictor of finding them. So "it's old, it'll fail" is wrong, and so is "it's old but it's always been fine". The inspection exists precisely because neither assumption is reliable.
What this means commercially: be sceptical of anyone who inspects your flat and immediately quotes a full rewire. Ask which observations are dangerous, which are potentially dangerous, and which are recommendations. Ask what the minimum is to make the report satisfactory, and what the sensible scope would be if you were doing it properly. Those are two different numbers and you are entitled to both. Our guide to EICR cost in London explains why remedials should always be quoted itemised after the inspection rather than bundled before it.
What tends to be found in this stock
Central London flats have a recognisable set of electrical problems, driven by their history rather than by neglect.
- No RCD protection. Older boards predate it. This is a very common finding and usually the trigger for a board change.
- Bonding. Main protective bonding to incoming gas and water services is often missing, undersized, or was never re-established after a plumbing alteration. This one matters and it is frequently disturbed by unrelated work — a plumber cuts out an old lead run and the bond goes in the skip with it.
- Accumulated alterations. A hundred years of kitchens, immersion heaters, electric showers, extract fans and lighting schemes, all added to circuits never designed for them.
- Buried and inaccessible junctions. Connections under floors, above ceilings, behind panelling, made by people who never expected anyone to look again.
- Imported problems. In converted houses, circuits that wander between demises because the conversion was done before anyone thought about boundaries.
That last one is a lease problem as much as an electrical one, and it is why converted stock around Bayswater and Paddington throws up findings that purpose-built blocks in St John's Wood rarely do.
Part P: who may do the work
Electrical work in a dwelling falls under Building Regulations Part P. Certain categories of work are notifiable, which means either the work is carried out by someone registered under a competent person scheme who can self-certify, or it is notified to building control and inspected. Either way you should receive certification for the work at the end.
This matters for landlords for a mundane reason: paperwork you do not have is paperwork you cannot show. If a previous owner had a kitchen rewired by someone who left no certificate, that work exists in your flat with no provenance. It is not necessarily unsafe. It is simply undocumented, and an inspector may treat it more cautiously as a result. When you commission work, collect the certificates and file them with the lease.
Bathrooms are the sharp end of this. A bathroom engages Part P for the electrics alongside Part F for ventilation and Part G for sanitation and hot water — see our guide to building regulations for bathrooms, and our bathroom refurbishment page for how the trades sequence around it.
Where your responsibility stops
In a leasehold flat, the installation you are responsible for is defined by your lease, and typically begins around the consumer unit. Upstream — tails, meter, intake, riser — usually belongs to the freeholder or the block. Landing lights, entryphone, riser cupboards: not yours.
So when a report flags something upstream, you have a defect you cannot lawfully fix. The correct move is to write to the managing agent, keep the correspondence, and let the block's contractor deal with it. Many freeholds in Mayfair, Marylebone and the surrounding streets sit with large estates, and their contractor arrangements and consent requirements vary considerably — check your lease and ask your agent rather than assuming. Nobody should be touching a communal intake because a private landlord asked them to.
Standards during works, not just after them
Compliance is usually discussed as an inspection problem. Half of it is a construction problem.
Every time a flat is altered, the electrical installation is altered with it, and every alteration is a chance to create the finding that fails your next EICR. Cables get nicked by a flooring nail. A bond gets cut and not reinstated. A junction gets buried under a new screed. A downlight goes into a ceiling with no thought about the fire integrity of the floor above.
This is why the order of trades matters, and why flooring should never go down over an untested first fix. On any refurbishment, the right sequence is: agree scope, first fix, test and certify what is new, then finish. Reversing that is how a satisfactory installation becomes an unsatisfactory report eighteen months later.
A practical policy for a small portfolio
- Inspect early in the cycle, never at the deadline. Unsatisfactory reports start a clock you cannot control.
- Read the recommended re-inspection date on the report rather than assuming five years.
- Keep every certificate for every alteration, and keep them with the lease documents.
- Do electrical work during voids. An empty flat is the cheapest access you will ever have.
- Fix bonding properly whenever a plumber touches the incoming services — our plumbing and electrical work is coordinated for exactly this reason.
- Where a defect is upstream of your demise, put it in writing to the agent immediately.
The parallel gas duty runs annually and is covered in our guide to gas safety certificates in London; the detail of the electrical duty itself is in EICR landlord requirements. Agents running several blocks generally want both on one schedule — that is what our page for estate agents describes.
What the paperwork costs
The inspection itself is a published price, set by the number of bedrooms: £150 for a one bed, £170 for a two bed, £190 for a three bed, and £210 for four bedrooms and above. All prices exclude VAT. That covers the inspection, the testing and the report.
Worth saying plainly, because it is the point of this whole page: the inspection is the cheap part and the standards are what decide the expensive part. Two identical flats in the same block pay the same for the report. One of them has a board from the 1980s, no RCD protection, and a bond that went in a skip when a bathroom was refitted; the other was rewired fifteen years ago and certified. They pay the same to be told, and completely different amounts to be put right. That is why the useful question is never "what does an EICR cost" but "what is the installation likely to need" — and why an owner who understands the codes can plan for the second number instead of being ambushed by it.
The other reason to know the inspection price up front is that it removes the argument for delay. It is a diarisable, five-yearly figure. Nobody is put off inspecting by £150. People are put off by not knowing what the number is, and then they inspect at the deadline, which is precisely when an unsatisfactory report is most expensive to deal with.
How we approach it
We inspect against the standard, not against a sales target. Findings are explained in plain words. Remedials are itemised, separated into what is required and what is advisable, and fixed-quoted before we start — our wider electrical work starts from £80 excluding VAT, and full wiring work, first and second fix, is priced by quotation against a written scope rather than guessed at. If a defect belongs to the building rather than to you, we say so.
Send us the flat's details or a photo of the board through the quote form or WhatsApp, and we will tell you what the inspection involves before you commit to it.
This page is practical guidance, not legal advice. Standards and regulations are amended over time; confirm the current requirements for your property and tenancy before relying on them.