Domestic projects

What is notifiable, and what that means

Part P of the Building Regulations covers electrical safety in dwellings, and certain work in a home has to be notified to building control. That includes installing a new circuit from the consumer unit, replacing a consumer unit, and altering an existing circuit in a special location such as a bathroom or a kitchen, where the risk from water is higher.

There are two ways to satisfy it. Either building control is notified and inspects, or the work is carried out by an electrician registered with a competent person scheme who can self certify it. We are NICEIC approved, which is the second route, and it means the certificate is issued on completion rather than waiting on an inspection.

The certificate is the point

An Electrical Installation Certificate is not a formality. It is the document that gets asked for when a property is sold, when an insurer investigates a claim and when a letting agent needs to demonstrate compliance. Work done without one is difficult to evidence years later, whatever its actual quality.

The underlying standard is BS 7671, the IET Wiring Regulations, currently the 18th Edition including Amendment 2 of 2022. Every job we certify is worked and tested to it, and the test results form part of what you are handed at the end.

Older housing stock in Lincolnshire

A lot of property in this county is older than its wiring suggests, because circuits have been added over decades rather than planned. Extra sockets, a spur for a shower, a garden supply, each reasonable on its own and collectively a board nobody can read with no spare ways left in it.

The sensible first step is usually an inspection rather than a quotation. An EICR establishes what is genuinely there and what condition it is in, and it very often changes what the right job actually is. It is also the point at which sorting the distribution out first tends to make everything that follows simpler and cheaper.