Landlord Electrical Certificate

Joined
9 Mar 2009
Messages
141
Reaction score
0
Location
Surrey
Country
United Kingdom
Hi,

I had an electrician doing the safety checks for a rental house.
He said that all was in order. He promised to give the certificate laater the same day and then postponned and postponned. When I ask for the document, he says "it has to be appropriately processed online to the affiliated organisation".

What does that blabla mean?

If everything is ok, isn't it a document that can be provided immediatly by the electrician?

Thanks.

Letty
 
Sponsored Links
Is the electrician registered with an organisation like NICEIC, ELECSA, NAPIT etc?

Where you are, do the council require results of inspections to be submitted to them online?

Doing an inspection is not work which is notifiable wrt Building Regulations, and so does not have to be "processed online to the affiliated organisation".
 
Hello,

What does all this mean?

The electrician is "certified" to do this kind of check. He said he was.
The house concerned is an old bungalow that we bought 2 years and which has been, before we owned it, always rented.
The estate agent asked us to get a legal certificate (as well as for gas), the Council did not ask anything.

Thanks.

Arlette
 
Is the electrician just delaying because it is paperwork and that certificate takes time to prepare? I don't even know what it looks like.
 
Sponsored Links
Hello,

What does all this mean?

The electrician is "certified" to do this kind of check. He said he was.
People can say anything.

How did you find him?

Is he registered with an organisation like NICEIC, ELECSA, NAPIT etc? They have searchable registers - you can check online.


Is the electrician just delaying because it is paperwork and that certificate takes time to prepare? I don't even know what it looks like.
They don't take long to prepare, once the work is done. In fact, if he was going to present you with a handwritten one he could have filled it in as he went along.

It's called an Electrical Installation Condition Report, or EICR - you can Bing images to see what it looks like. If he's using forms provided by a scheme like NICEIC etc they have their own layout, again their websites should have examples.

They're all pretty much the same, though - they all have the same information on, it's just the formatting/layout which varies.

You can see the basic "model" forms on the IET website, pp 13 onwards: https://electrical.theiet.org/wiring-regulations/forms/2015-amd3-forms.cfm?type=pdf
 
The electrician is "certified" to do this kind of check. He said he was.
He does not have to be 'certified' to do this work, although some of the schemes pretend that he does.
If anyone is asking for a particular scheme's paperwork then that scheme may insist he registers.

The estate agent asked us to get a legal certificate (as well as for gas), the Council did not ask anything.
There is no such thing for electrics.

Landlord Electrical Certificate.
No such thing - officially.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all this.
This is an electrician that has been suggested by a builder that worked for us.
I had a better look at his business card and can see 2 logos Napit and someting Safe (too small, can't read) so i suppose that he is member of these and hoppefully knows what he is doing.
For the EICR, using a form from Napit means that all the info will be processed by Napit (like the electrcian pretended) and that would explain any delay?
I just want to know why I have to wait to receive that document and why I have to beg to receive what I am going to pay for.

Letty
 
I just want to know why I have to wait to receive that document and why I have to beg to receive what I am going to pay for.
I don't think you should. At least you haven't paid.

Call and make a fuss. Tell them you need it last week for the insurance.
 
It depends how you do it and what the NAPIT backend is like.

With NICEIC using their (horrible and buggy) iPad app - which is obviously slower testing, but if there's two of you it's no big deal. Then a certificate takes very little time to prepare. Mostly checking for errors.

If you're handwriting them, then yes, transcribing a full condition report can be fairly lengthy, a one DB cert shouldn't take all that long though. Last non-dom one I typed was about 9 DBs and numerous codes. That took a long time
 
First EICR I had done was hand written and just left with me.
Next time (different sparky as my first one had retired) he put it into his computer and emailed me a PDF the same day.
There's really no excuse for delays in the paperwork - it's "part of the job" and the sparky should have allowed time for it. Ie the job is to do the inspection, testing, AND paperwork - it isn't to do the inspection and testing with the paperwork being something to "find time for later".

As a landlord you are not required to have an EICR (though there's talk of that changing) but you are required to provide an installation that is "safe". Obviously, the easiest way to demonstrate that latter is to have a "clean" (as in no faults) EICR.
Some agents demand an EICR from their landlords - that is their prerogative and I don't blame them having seen the state of the electrics in some properties.
Personally, my policy is something of a CYA approach. While there is little that's mandatory, both my properties have fully RCBO CUs - though still with plastic cases. I figure that if anything happens, being able to hold up an EICR saying everything is safe puts anyone complaining in the position of having to show otherwise - rather than me having to show that it is.
 
I use NICEIC Certification Software (Clik) which is actually very good. However, the problem comes when you have observations and need to cross-reference them with Schedules of Inspections etc. This all takes a substantial amount of time. And any non-domestic installation with multiple TPN DBs you need to be very careful that you don't end of mixing all of the data up. In fact I had a bug with the tablet software one time where for non-domestic versions of certs when you changed DB (even if you had saved the data) it all went missing. Thankfully this has now been corrected as it's not much fun when you have to return to retest a job that's already been tested.
 

DIYnot Local

Staff member

If you need to find a tradesperson to get your job done, please try our local search below, or if you are doing it yourself you can find suppliers local to you.

Select the supplier or trade you require, enter your location to begin your search.


Are you a trade or supplier? You can create your listing free at DIYnot Local

 
Sponsored Links
Back
Top