EICR stands for Electrical Installation Condition Report. It is an inspection of the fixed wiring in a property — the cables in the walls and floors, the consumer unit, the sockets and switches — carried out by a qualified electrician and written up against the current wiring regulations, BS 7671.
What the inspection actually involves
The electrician tests the circuits rather than just looking at them. That means checking earthing and bonding, measuring insulation resistance on the cables, timing how fast the RCDs trip, and confirming polarity at every socket and switch. Anything accessible gets opened up and looked at — the consumer unit, accessible junction boxes, the loft if there is one. What is buried in a wall or under a floor cannot be inspected without damaging the property, so the report says so rather than guessing.
Who is legally required to have one
- Private landlords in England, at least every five years, under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector Regulations.
- Landlords running an HMO, under separate licensing conditions that usually mirror the same interval.
- Most commercial and let premises, at an interval the insurer, the lease or the fire risk assessment sets rather than a single fixed number.
Owning the home you live in does not carry the same legal duty. The wiring regulations suggest roughly ten years as a sensible interval for a normal owner-occupied installation, but that is guidance rather than law, and a much older property or one that has never been checked is a case for going sooner. How long a report actually stays valid — and what happens if it recommends a shorter interval than that — is its own question, which we cover next.
What you get at the end
The finished document is usually called an EICR certificate, though strictly it is a report rather than a certificate — a certificate says work was done to a standard, a report says what condition an existing installation is in. Any fault found gets a code: C1, C2, C3 or FI. What each of those actually means for your deadline and your wallet is worth its own explanation, which follows this one.
We carry out EICRs across London, Essex and north Kent, and code every finding plainly rather than leaving you to interpret a report on your own.
If you are unsure, it is always cheaper to ask than to guess. Give us a call and we will tell you straight.