EICR questions, answered straight.

Electrical Installation Condition Report. Almost nobody says the long version, including electricians, which is why this site leads with the acronym.

The fixed electrical installation: the circuits, the consumer unit, sockets, switches, light fittings and anything else permanently connected. It does not cover things you plug in, and in England a private landlord has no duty to have those tested at all.

No, and the distinction matters. A certificate is issued for new work, by the person who did it, saying it complies. A condition report is an assessment of an existing installation by someone who did not install it. People call it a certificate constantly, ourselves included when we are not being careful, but it is a report.

A survey looks at the property as a whole and normally recommends a separate electrical inspection rather than replacing one. If your survey flagged the wiring, an EICR is the thing it was pointing at.

No. An EICR covers the fixed installation, PAT covers appliances you plug in. They answer different questions. Scotland's repairing standard requires both of a private landlord; England's regulations require only the installation inspection, which is where most of the confusion comes from.

No. There is no legal requirement for an owner-occupier in England to hold one. People get them when buying, selling, insuring, or when they have inherited a property and do not know the history of the wiring. If none of those apply and nothing is going wrong, there may be nothing useful an inspection could tell you.

Yes. In England the electrical installation of a privately rented home must be inspected and tested at intervals of no more than five years, and you must be able to produce the report.

It does now. Registered providers came into scope in 2025, and for tenancies granted before 1 December 2025 the first inspection and the first check of equipment the provider supplies must both happen before 1 November 2026.

That depends on the arrangement, and it is genuinely not a question with one answer. The duties on a short-term let are not identical to those on an assured tenancy. Get it confirmed for your specific letting rather than assuming the standard landlord position applies.

Not legally. A buyer's solicitor may ask whether one exists, and a buyer may want one, but nothing requires you to hold one in order to sell.

If there is a tenancy, the duty is likely to apply regardless of who the tenant is. The regulations turn on the type of tenancy, not on the relationship. Worth checking properly rather than assuming a family arrangement is outside them.

At intervals of no more than five years. If the report itself specifies a shorter interval, that shorter one applies instead. It overrides the five years rather than sitting alongside it.

There is no legal interval, and we are deliberately not printing the figure that circulates for this, because we have not verified it against a primary source. Your report will carry a recommended date for the next inspection, and that recommendation is specific to your installation rather than a general rule.

There is no interval set in law. The Electricity at Work Regulations require the installation to be maintained so it does not become dangerous, and the frequency is a risk-based decision you make, record and review. Recommended maximum intervals come from BS 7671 guidance, not from statute. Any page telling you the law requires one every five years for commercial premises is wrong.

No. The report runs with the installation, not with the tenancy. What you do need to do is give the new tenant a copy before they occupy.

C1 is danger present, requiring immediate action. C2 is potentially dangerous, requiring urgent action. C3 is an improvement recommended and is not a fault. FI means further investigation is advised because something could not be fully identified within the extent of the inspection.

A C1 or a C2. Under the current amendment to BS 7671, C3 and FI were decoupled from that outcome, so neither of them makes a report unsatisfactory on its own. That changed in 2026 and a great deal of published guidance still describes the previous position.

No, and we are not going to pretend the position is tidier than it is. An FI not making a report unsatisfactory is a different thing from an FI being safe to ignore: where a report says further investigative work is necessary, a landlord's duty to act within 28 days is engaged by the regulations. How that sits with the 2026 change is not something we have found a clear answer to. Ask the electrician who signed your report what they meant by it.

No. A C3 is usually something installed to an older standard that was correct when it was done. It is worth considering, and it is not a requirement.

Because parts of an installation cannot be seen without taking the building apart. Recording what could not be inspected, and why, is proper practice. In older or occupied property there is nearly always something, and a report on a Victorian terrace with no limitations recorded is the one worth questioning.

Twenty-eight days from the inspection to complete the remedial or further investigative work, or less where the report specifies a shorter period. You must then obtain written confirmation from a qualified person that it has been done, and supply that to the tenants and to the local housing authority within 28 days of completion.

A local housing authority can impose a financial penalty of up to £40,000, and can impose more than one where a failure continues. That ceiling was £30,000 until it was raised in 2025, so older pages still quote the lower figure.

No. The regulations require written confirmation from a qualified person, not from the same person who inspected. Using the same one is often simpler because they already know the installation, but it is your choice.

The report is a record of what was found on the day and it does not get rewritten. What follows the remedial work is written confirmation that the work has been carried out and the standards are met. Some electricians will also carry out a fresh inspection, which is a separate piece of work.

Yes, in stages. Testing is done circuit by circuit with the supply isolated, so the property is without power intermittently through the visit. Worth planning around anything that cannot lose power, and worth telling a tenant in advance.

It depends on the number of circuits and how accessible they are, not on the size of the property. A modern flat with six circuits and a labelled board is a different job from an older house on its second board with a loft conversion. Anyone quoting a duration before seeing the property is guessing.

Some of them. A proportion of accessories are removed and inspected, and which ones and how many is a judgement the electrician records in the report along with the extent of the inspection.

Someone needs to provide access to the property, the consumer unit and the rooms being sampled. In a tenanted property that is the single most common reason an inspection has to be repeated, which is why arranging it in advance matters more than it sounds.

Sometimes, for something small, and only with your agreement. An inspection and remedial work are different jobs. Where a C1 is found, making it safe on the spot is the normal and correct thing to do.

We do not publish a figure, because we do not have one we could stand behind. What moves the number is the circuit count and the access. A headline price that changes once someone has seen the consumer unit is worse than no price at all.

Mostly circuit count, and partly how thorough the inspection is. A cheap report and a proper one are not the same product, and the difference shows up in the schedule of test results, or in its absence.

No. The inspection tells you what is there. Anything that needs doing is separate work, quoted separately, and you are free to have it done by someone else.

Usually, if they can be done in a run. That is a conversation about scheduling rather than a published discount, and it is why portfolios and social housing programmes are handled differently from single visits.

A qualified and competent person. Inspection and testing carries its own qualification, separate from installation.

No. We put you in touch with a qualified local electrician and arrange the visit. They carry out the inspection and sign the report in their own name. What we check before sending anyone a job is set out in full on the vetting page.

One. Your details go to a single electrician and are not sold on or added to a marketing list.

Yes, and you should. Competent person schemes publish searchable registers. Take the registration number from your quote and look it up on the scheme's own site rather than trusting a logo on any website, this one included.

Chesterfield and the towns around it: Staveley, Wingerworth, Dronfield, Clowne, South Normanton, Somercotes and Matlock. Distances are stated plainly on each town page rather than glossed over. If you are just outside, ask.

Your local housing authority, and it is not the same one across this patch. Five cover the towns on this site: Chesterfield Borough, North East Derbyshire District, Bolsover District, Amber Valley Borough and Derbyshire Dales District. A landlord with property across the area deals with more than one.

It changes what can be seen. Solid-wall stone construction means more concealed cable and more that has to be recorded as a limitation. That is normal for the housing stock in the Dales, and it makes an honest record of the inspection's extent more important, not less.

No. Both are large cities with their own markets, and we would rather say so than take an enquiry we are not the right people for. Dronfield sits on the Sheffield boundary and is covered.