Electrical Inspection & Condition Report (EICR)
Need an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) for your home? We are NICEIC-registered and specialise in periodic inspections and testing
All electrics in your home will deteriorate with age and use. So it’s a good idea to inspect and test them regularly to ensure they’re in good, safe working order.
An EICR, or Electrical Installation Condition Report, is issued by a qualified electrician after an inspection and tests of your property
Such electrical safety checks are commonly referred to as ‘periodic inspection and testing’ and our friendly team of NICEIC-registered electricians can carry them out for you affordably and without any fuss.
And this is what we’ll be looking for:
• Electrical circuits or equipment that are overloaded
• Potential electric shock risks and fire hazards
• Defective electrical work
• Any lack of earthing or bonding
EICR include
- A detailed inspection of the electrical installation, including all wiring, circuits, fittings, and appliances.
- A list of any defects or issues that are found during the inspection, along with recommendations for repair or improvement.
- An assessment of the electrical installation’s overall condition, including its compliance with current regulations and safety standards.
- Any necessary test results, such as earth resistance readings and continuity tests.
- A summary of the electrician’s findings, including any urgent or serious issues that need to be addressed.
- A schedule for any recommended follow-up inspections or further testing.
How often is a periodic inspection required?
For owner-occupiers, your electrics should be inspected and tested every 10 years. If you’re a tenant, your landlord should be inspecting your property’s electrics every five years. We recommend you check with your landlord to make sure this is happening.
Other times when a periodic inspection should be carried out are:
- When a property is being prepared for letting
- Before selling a property or buying a previously occupied property
Who should carry out the periodic inspection and what happens?
Periodic inspection and testing should be carried out only by electrically competent persons, such as our NICEIC-registered electricians. They will check the condition of your electrics against the UK standard for the safety of electrical installations, the catchily titled BS 7671 – Requirements for Electrical Installations (IET Wiring Regulations).
The competent person will then issue you with your EICR, which will detail any damage, deterioration, defects and dangerous conditions.
If anything dangerous or potentially dangerous is found, the overall condition of the electrical installation will be declared to be unsatisfactory. In other words, remedial action is needed immediately to make sure you and your family or flatmates are not at risk.
EICR Coding
Observations are recorded on your Fixed Wiring Report, also known as as an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR). They are things which are wrong with your installation that need rectifying and they are coded according to their danger level, using the codes C1, C2, C3 and FI.
Code C1
A Code 1 (C1) observation means ‘ Danger present. Risk of injury. Immediate remedial action required.’
A C1 represents an immediate threat to the safety of your employees, customers or guests and should be rectified or made safe as soon as possible.
An example of a C1 defect would be accessible live conductors due to damage, poorly modified enclosures or removed maintenance panels. Incorrect polarity would also attract a code C1 as it may allow conductive parts, not normally expected to be live, to become live.
Once a C1 threat is identified, your Intersafe engineer will inform the duty holder or responsible person for the installation immediately, both verbally and in writing, of the risk of injury that exists. Access to the faulty circuit may even be blocked, or the circuit turned off until the the defect is fixed.
Code C2
A Code 2 (C2) is not as severe as a C1, but is still a potentially dangerous defect. They may not pose an immediate threat but are likely to become a danger in the future. A C2 is described as ‘Potentially dangerous – urgent remedial action required.’
The phrase “potentially dangerous”, in the C2 code is designed to point towards a risk of injury from contact with live parts after a sequence of events. A sequence of events could mean that an individual may gain access to live parts through a day to day task that would not usually be expected to give access to live parts.
Code FI
An observation code FI is described as ‘ Further investigation required without delay.‘ This means that your electrical testing engineer has observed something whilst carrying out the testing, for instance if the emergency lights seem very dim. This might not have been covered in the report so they have noted it separately as code FI.
Unsatisfactory EICR Report
Codes C1 and C2 attract an unsatisfactory report rating and you must have these defects rectified in order to demonstrate compliance.
A report could also be classed as unsatisfactory if the only fault codes are FI. For example if there are lots of circuits that are not verified at the time of testing, and each has an FI code, the inspector would not be able to categorically determine whether these circuits are safe or not.
Code C3
Code 3 is described as ‘Improvement recommended.’
This means something has been identified which does not comply with the latest regulations but isn’t actually dangerous. For example, the installation may not comply with the current version of the regulations or may have damaged fittings which do not have exposed live parts. A code C3, in itself, should not warrant an overall unsatisfactory report.
