An EICR is what that electrician thinks, there is no laid out what is considered as potentially dangerous, lets face it, 230 volts AC is always potentially dangerous.
The rental rules for an EICR are often impossible to comply with, any item not on wheels and over 18 kg or fixed in some other way is included in the new landlord law, often a washing machine is on wheels, but the dryer, and dishwasher are included in the EICR, and so is the boiler, the latter unless it says on it gas safe only, the electrician should in theory remove the covers to check, specially the way which plumbers seem to ignore the rules and used green/yellow wires for other than earth.
So the question for any electrical installation tester is, do I follow the new law, or do I follow what the IET or electrical safety council recommends? Even to the point where it was always considered if a reasonable sample passed, there is not need to remove every socket to check.
But every edition of BS7671 says with the pre-amble
Installations designed after "date" are to comply with BS 7671:date.
The Regulations apply to the design. erection and verification of electrical installations, also additions and alterations to existing installations. Existing installations that have been installed in accordance with earlier editions of the Regulations may not comply with this edition in every respect. This does not necessarily mean that they are unsafe for continued use or require upgrading.
BS 7671:date includes changes necessary to maintain technical alignment with CENELEC harmonization documents. A summary of the main changes is given below.
So once one reaches that point, if the installation was designed before the date, then one has to look at the regulation in force when it was designed, this would require one to have every copy of BS7671, which is not really an option, so the EICR does not reference to a regulation as such, but to if dangerous or potentially dangerous, so if an inspector says a plastic consumer unit is dangerous, then he must say why.
Fitted in a lift shaft, clearly potentially dangerous, but escape route needs to have no carpet so a carpeted stair case can not be classed as an escape route.
The "CENELEC harmonization documents" are a problem, as I for one have never read them. And also what is down to the electrician, missing smoke alarms clearly are a potentially danger, but not an electrical potentially danger, so it is not down to the electrician to list they are missing, that is down to the fire inspector.
The same applies to batteries in the loft space, no longer permitted, but this is because in a fire they make fighting the fire a lot harder, they are not in themselves a fire risk.
As to Ze, above 200Ω is considered unstable, with a TT supply, but the landlord law says the EICR starts at the isolator, and does not include the DNO meter etc, so although the IET may want it recording, the landlord law says it is not part of the EICR, I personally think that is daft, but I did not write the law.
However we do have a duty of care, the tenant has no say as to if we have one RCD feeding many MCB's or even if a RCD is fitted. He has to accept what the landlord has provided. So be it a freezer defrosting due to power loss, or a shock due to lack of RCD, it is very clear with the Emma Shaw case, had RCD's been fitted, she would not have died, at the time we did not have to fit RCD's, so it was the foreman blamed for not using skilled labour.
The South Wales case, showed how the inspector could be found liable for not doing a good EICR, it was under trading standard he was fined, not any electrical law, so it was a wake up call for the drive by inspectors. The get out is to always find a fault, then one can say hand on heart, I did not inspect further, as clearly work was required to bring it to standard, and it would have involved danger to continue to inspect.
So there is the always find fault approach, so in the future they can say, not my fault, that should have been found when XYZ was corrected. I feel that is wrong, but I know years ago my son was told, always find a fault.
