05/10/2020
What is an electrical-installation condition report (EICR)?
The EICR is a comprehensive check of the fixed wiring of your electrical installation. It’s a snapshot of your electrics to establish whether they're safe and compliant with the regulations, and to identify any potential safety issues. It’s about checking the underlying electrical system – the wiring, the fuse board, earth bonding and all the other bits you can’t see that could be a risk – rather than whether your lights come on or not.
The electrician will visit your property, make a visual assessment, and then carry out a series of checks on your electrical systems. If they find any ‘code one’ problems, ie problems that are immediately dangerous, they will need to arrange to fix those there and then or at least make them safe. They’ll note any other ‘code two’ problems that are potentially dangerous, and will provide a quote to fix them at the end of the process, along with any ‘code threes’, which are recommendations not deemed unsafe.
What should be checked during an EICR?
The electrician will check that your fuse board is safe and compliant with the current regulations – this means whether it has the necessary circuit breakers and RCD protection. (Residual current devices are designed to prevent you from getting a fatal electric shock if you touch something live.)
Other checks designed to prevent fatal electric shocks include ensuring that everything is correctly earthed. The electrician will check this on your gas-meter pipework, water pipework, radiators and all the metal in the building.
They will also check a sample (at least 10%) of your sockets, lights, switches and accessories to see that the wiring is installed correctly.
The most common problems are no bonding to the gas or water-mains pipework, or an out-of-date fuse board .But the advantage of regular checks is that once you’ve corrected any major faults, those will stay corrected, and the amount of work and costs involved for further checks should be minimal.
So, what does this means to you?
All Landlords must ensure every fixed electrical installation is inspected and tested at least every five years by a qualified person.
The statistics are scary - 70 people are killed and 350,000 people seriously injured each year because of electrical faults, and they’re the cause of almost half of all accidental UK house fires according to Electrical Safety First.