F & A Electrical is an NICEIC Approved Contractor working across Hendon NW4 and Golders Green NW11 — Brent Street, The Burroughs, Church End, Queens Road, Hendon Central, Golders Green Road, Finchley Road, Temple Fortune, Hampstead Garden Suburb and the Childs Hill edge. We do EICRs, fuse board replacements, fault finding, rewires, extra circuits, EV chargers and landlord and commercial work. We are based at Ten 87 Studios, Markfield Road, Tottenham N15, which is roughly 30 minutes across on the North Circular — longer in the morning, because Henlys Corner is the pinch and always has been. Part P registered, BS 7671 18th Edition, £5m public liability, 9.32/10 from 242 Checkatrade reviews. Call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453.
NW4 and NW11 sit next to each other but they are not the same job. Hendon is largely a 1920s and 1930s suburb that grew after Hendon Central station opened in 1923, with an older village core at Church End and The Burroughs behind it. Golders Green went up a generation earlier, after its station opened in 1907, and then Hampstead Garden Suburb was laid out alongside it from 1906. That difference in dates shows up in the wiring, in the boards and — more than anywhere else in Barnet — in what you are allowed to put on the outside of the building.
What we do in NW4 and NW11
- EICRs for homeowners, landlords, HMO licence applications and solicitor-led sales, with the report and the remedial quote the same day where we can.
- Fuse board and consumer unit replacement — RCBO boards, with the earthing and bonding corrected in the same visit rather than left for later.
- Fault finding — tripping RCDs, dead sockets, dead lighting circuits, water in an outside circuit, burning smells.
- Main earthing and main protective bonding, including TT conversions where the network cannot give an earth.
- Rewires, partial rewires and single circuits — showers, cookers, garden offices, garages, loft rooms, annexes.
- EV charge points where there is off-street parking, with an honest answer where there is not.
- Landlord and HMO compliance — EICR, fire alarm, emergency lighting and PAT, planned as one visit where the building allows it.
- Commercial — shops, kosher bakeries and restaurants, offices, surgeries and small workshops along Golders Green Road, Brent Street, Temple Fortune and Hendon Central.
- Time switches and Shabbat clocks set up properly — a lighting or hotplate circuit on a programmed switch, with the switch somewhere reachable and the circuit still protected as it should be.
Prices in Hendon and Golders Green
These are our labour and certification prices, inc VAT. Materials — boards, accessories, cable, fittings, charge points — are itemised separately so you can see what you are paying for. Our minimum charge is £108 inc VAT, which is one hour at the standard rate; standard labour after that is £90 per hour + VAT. Nothing is priced below the minimum charge.
Inspection and testing
| Job | Labour + certification |
|---|---|
| Attend, trace the fault, make safe (first hour) | from £108 — comes off the job if you go ahead |
| EICR, 1–2 bed flat | from £140 |
| EICR, 3 bed house or maisonette | from £170 |
| EICR, 4 bed house | from £200 |
| EICR, 5 bed or large semi | from £250 |
| EICR, large detached or more than one board | £300–£400 |
| HMO EICR | £250–£500 by room count and number of boards |
| Commercial EICR | from £220, quoted per circuit on survey |
| PAT testing | around £5 per appliance, £108 minimum visit |
| Emergency lighting, annual test and certificate | from £180 up to 10 luminaires |
Installation and remedial work
| Job | Labour + certification |
|---|---|
| Consumer unit, 6-way, flat or small house | from £550 |
| Consumer unit, 10-way, typical 3-bed | from £650 |
| Consumer unit, 12-way or more, larger house | from £750 |
| Board and EICR in the same visit | from £690 |
| New 16 mm² main earthing conductor | from £180 |
| Main bonding to gas and water, both within reach | from £180 |
| Earthing and bonding put right alongside other work | from £108 |
| Full TT conversion — electrode, 100 mA S-type main switch, all-RCBO board, bonding | from £850 |
| Flat rewire — 1 bed / 2 bed / 3 bed | £2,200–£3,200 / £3,000–£4,500 / £4,200–£6,000 |
| House rewire — 2 bed / 3 bed / 4 bed | £2,800–£4,000 / £3,500–£5,500 / £4,500–£8,000 |
| House rewire — 5 bed / large detached, Garden Suburb or Church End | £6,500–£10,000 / £9,500–£14,000 |
| Partial rewire | £1,600–£3,000 |
| EV charge point, off-street parking | from £450 |
| Method statement and cable route plan for a Trust or planning submission | from £240 |
| Out of hours | £60 + VAT per half hour on top |
Rewire ranges are quoted on circuit count, not bedroom count. A four-bedroom house in Hampstead Garden Suburb with a cellar, a garage, a garden office and three bathrooms is not the same job as a four-bedroom semi off Wise Lane, and pricing it off the bedrooms would be guessing. For a longer explanation of what moves a rewire price, see our house rewire cost guide and what it costs to rewire a flat.
What we actually find in NW4 and NW11 wiring
The main earth clamped to a water main that is no longer metal. This is the single most common serious finding across our whole patch and Hendon and Golders Green are no exception. The earthing clamp is still sitting on the incoming water pipe inside the cupboard, looking exactly as it did when it was fitted, but the water company has long since renewed the service in blue plastic at the boundary. The earth now goes into a short length of copper and stops. It reads as an installation with an earth and it has not got one. If a report has landed on your doormat saying there is no main earth, we have written the whole thing up here — including why a new fuse board on its own does not fix it.
Main bonding undersized or missing after a meter move. A great many NW4 and NW11 houses have had the gas or electricity meter moved to an external box at some point, and the bonding was not picked up afterwards. We find 6 mm² where 10 mm² is wanted, gas bonding missed entirely, or a clamp sitting a metre and a half from the meter instead of within 600 mm of it on the consumer’s side of the stopcock.
Sound 1980s rewires behind boards that have aged out. This is the typical Hendon semi — the streets off Watford Way, Wise Lane, Shirehall Lane, Bell Lane, Hendon Way and the Queens Road grid. The house was rewired once in the 1970s or 80s, the cable is still in reasonable condition, and the thing that is failing the report is the board: rewirable fuses, one 30 mA RCD covering half the circuits, no RCD on the lighting. That is an RCBO board from £550, not a rewire, and we will tell you so rather than quote for the bigger job.
Big houses divided into flats on one original intake. Around Brent Street, Queens Road, Hendon Lane, Finchley Road and the larger Edwardian and interwar houses off Golders Green Road, a lot of stock was cut into two, three or four self-contained flats decades ago. The supply was never upgraded, the sub-mains are flat twin-and-earth clipped up the common stairwell with no fire-rated fixings, and no flat has its own means of isolation. It passes until a tenant fits an electric shower, and then it does not.
Loft conversions nobody notified. Very common across both postcodes, and almost always the same pattern: the loft room is spurred off a first-floor circuit, there is no RCD on it, there is no Building Control record and no certificate. It is usually fixable as a circuit, not a rewire — but it needs finding first, and the paperwork needs reconstructing before a sale.
Water in the garden circuits. Garden Suburb and Church End gardens are long, mature and heavily planted, and the outside lighting, pond pumps and garden office supplies that have been added over thirty years are usually a mix of buried flat twin-and-earth, unglanded joints and sockets with no RCD at the supply end. We price those on circuit count after a look.
Hampstead Garden Suburb, Church End and The Burroughs — the bit other trades get wrong
This is the thing that genuinely sets NW11 apart, and it is worth reading before you order a charge point or an outside light.
Hampstead Garden Suburb has two sets of controls, not one. It was founded in 1906 by Henrietta Barnett, who set up the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust and bought 243 acres from Eton College; Raymond Unwin was the principal architect, with Barry Parker on the master plan, and Edwin Lutyens laid out Central Square with St Jude’s, the Free Church and the Quaker Meeting House. It is just over 5,000 properties across NW11 and N2. Barnet designated it a conservation area in 1968 and has an Article 4 direction over it, which removes permitted development rights for external alterations that would not normally need planning permission at all. On top of that, the Trust operates a scheme of management approved under the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 — a High Court order of 17 January 1974, amended in 1983 — under which the Trust’s consent is needed for external alterations as freeholder, separately from the council’s.
In practice that means the Trust’s own design guidance treats a list of things an electrician might fit as needing both Trust consent and planning permission: external gas and electricity meter cabinets, satellite dishes, CCTV cameras, alarm boxes and solar panels. The guidance says meter cabinets “can be sited to the side of a house or accommodated in a discreet semi-underground box” — in other words there is normally a way to do it, but the position is not yours to choose on the day. On lighting it is blunter: downlighters in the eaves and large numbers of fittings should be avoided, and floodlighting “will not normally be permitted”.
None of that touches the wiring inside the house. Our Part P notification goes through our own scheme, not the council, and the standard the work has to meet is BS 7671 wherever the house happens to be. What the Suburb changes is the route the cable takes and what is allowed to appear on the elevation. So the order of work is: agree the position first, then book the install. We will do the survey, draw the route and write the method statement for a Trust or planning submission from £240, and we would rather spend that hour than turn up to a job that has to stop.
Hendon has two smaller conservation areas, both designated on 27 July 1983. Hendon Church End runs between Church Road, Church End, Church Terrace and Greyhound Hill, and contains the mid-13th-century Parish Church of St Mary (Grade II*), Church Farm House (Grade II*, mid-17th century), the Model Farm and Milking Parlour, and the Daniel Almshouses of about 1729. Hendon The Burroughs is the linear stretch of The Burroughs plus Burroughs Gardens, with twelve Grade II listed buildings — mostly early- to late-18th-century houses including Ivey House and Burroughs House — and an Article 4 direction over nos. 1–8 Burroughs Gardens and 63–77 odd The Burroughs.
The honest three-way split, which is the same wherever we work:
- Unlisted house, inside a conservation area: nobody controls the electrics inside. Rewire it, move the board, add circuits — notified through our scheme as normal.
- Outside the building: this can be controlled, and where an Article 4 direction or a Trust scheme of management is in force it is checked first. That covers meter boxes, external lights, charge points on a front elevation, cameras and alarm boxes.
- Listed building: internal work can need listed building consent in its own right — and the Class D permitted development right for a wall-mounted EV charge point does not apply within the curtilage of a listed building at all. Listed building consent has no application fee and an eight-week determination period. It costs time, not money.
We have written the whole heritage question up in detail on our listed building and conservation area rewire guide, which covers what you can and cannot do inside, why we will not put downlights into original lath and plaster, and how the consent process actually runs.
Brent Cross Town and the newer blocks — capacity, not condition
On the western edge of NW4, the Brent Cross Cricklewood regeneration is building out a new district with its own heat network: Vattenfall operates it, serving all 6,700 homes plus commercial and leisure buildings from what is described as one of the largest fully electric energy centres in Europe, with 30 MW of heat and 20 MW of cooling peak capacity.
Work in new blocks like these, and in the purpose-built flats around Hendon Central, Station Road and the Finchley Road end of Golders Green, is the opposite problem to the Victorian stock. The installation is sound and certificated. What is short is spare ways in the board, and what gets in the way is access. The board is often in a communal riser rather than inside the flat, so isolation and entry are arranged with the managing agent before we come, not on the morning. Where there is a heat network and no gas appliance in the flat, the load profile and the bonding are different from a house — there is no gas service to bond — and that belongs on the certificate rather than being left to the next inspector to puzzle over. For EV charging on allocated parking, permission from the management company comes before any electrical design.
Landlords, HMOs and flats above shops
Under the Private Rented Sector regulations every private rented home needs a satisfactory EICR every five years, with a copy to the tenant within 28 days of the inspection, and licensed HMOs are inspected far more often than that in practice. Barnet, like every London borough, operates licensing schemes that change — check the council’s current scheme for your street rather than relying on what was true last year or on what we tell you on the phone.
Two local patterns are worth flagging. First, the HMO and shared-house density around Middlesex University’s Hendon campus and The Burroughs means a lot of family houses have been let room by room with circuits added piecemeal; the report usually turns up more than the landlord expected, so budget for remedials, not just the inspection. Our HMO EICR page and HMO compliance guide set out what a licensing officer actually asks for.
Second, the flats above the shops. On Golders Green Road, Brent Street, Temple Fortune’s parade and the Hendon Central frontages there is normally one intake cupboard behind the shop, and the stair lighting for the flats above is fed off the shop’s circuits. The stairs go dark when the shop switches off at night, and any emergency lighting up there never gets a charge. The landlord’s supply for the common parts needs to be separate and permanently live, and that is a fit-out decision, not something to argue about after a fire risk assessment. Emergency lighting is its own regime — not part of the EICR — and we cover the testing and certificates on our emergency lighting certificate page.
Commercial work in Hendon and Golders Green
The commercial side here is mostly independent retail and food. Golders Green Road alone carries something like fifty kosher restaurants under rabbinical supervision, plus bakeries, grocers and coffee bars, and Brent Street has been Hendon’s main shopping street since the 1890s. Temple Fortune, Finchley Road and the parade at Hendon Central make up the rest, with offices, surgeries, small workshops and the institutional buildings around The Burroughs behind them.
Two practical points from that kind of work. A food unit that has been through four tenants always has undocumented additions behind the counter — extra sockets off a ring, a fryer or hotplate on something that was never sized for it, a fan unit spurred off a lighting circuit. Price the remedials in, not just the report. And on scheduling: we work Sunday to Friday in NW4 and NW11 and we do not book a Friday afternoon job that needs the power off, particularly in winter. If a shutdown has to sit either side of Shabbat or a festival, say so when you ring and we will plan the isolation around it.
Nearby areas we cover
Elsewhere in Barnet: Mill Hill NW7 · Finchley N3, N12 and N2 · Whetstone and Totteridge N20 · Friern Barnet and New Southgate N11 · High Barnet and Chipping Barnet EN5 · East Barnet and New Barnet EN4. Over the border into Camden and Brent: Hampstead · NW3 · NW6 · NW10. We also cover Edgware and Burnt Oak HA8 and Childs Hill and Cricklewood NW2 on the same rates. Borough-wide pages: EICR Barnet, fuse board replacement in Barnet, consumer unit replacement in Barnet, EV charger installation in Barnet and emergency electrician in Barnet. The full list is on our London service areas page.
Hendon and Golders Green electrician — common questions
How long does it take you to get to NW4 or NW11?
About 30 minutes from our base in Tottenham N15, straight across on the North Circular. Henlys Corner, where the A406 meets the A1, is the morning bottleneck and can add twenty minutes, so we will not promise you a fifteen-minute response we cannot keep. We hold same-day slots most weekdays — if we have one we will give it to you, and if we do not we will tell you that instead of booking you in and moving you later.
Do I need permission from the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust for an EV charger?
For anything that appears on the outside of the building, assume yes and check before you buy the unit. The Trust’s consent as freeholder under its scheme of management is separate from Barnet’s planning decision, and the Article 4 direction over the conservation area means some external alterations need planning permission that would be permitted development anywhere else. The electrical design is the easy part. If the house is listed, the permitted development right for a wall-mounted charge point does not apply within the curtilage at all, so you are into planning permission and probably listed building consent. We will survey, propose a position and route and write it up for the submission from £240.
My EICR says “no main earth”. Is that a fuse board problem?
No, and this matters. “No main earth” means the main earthing terminal is not connected to a means of earthing — most often because the earth clamp is sitting on a water service the water company has since renewed in plastic. A new board on a dead earth is a new board with the same C1. The earth is usually UK Power Networks’ to provide rather than ours to sell, and they do not normally charge for an earthing terminal on an existing domestic supply; the cost is the wait for their visit. Only if the network cannot provide one do we go TT, with an electrode, a 100 mA S-type main switch and every circuit RCD protected. Full explanation on our no main earth page.
Can you do a same-day EICR for a sale in NW4 or NW11?
Usually, yes, if you ring early. Conveyancing EICRs are the most common same-day request we get and we keep slots back for them. You get the report, and a separate quote for anything coded C1, C2 or FI so your solicitor has a number to work with. See same-day EICR and our EICR cost guide.
Can I have an EV charger if I park on the street?
Not a wall-mounted point, no. A charge point needs your own off-street parking — a drive, a garage, a hardstanding or an allocated bay you have permission to use. We will not run a cable across a public footway and we will not fit a point that only works with a trailing lead over the pavement; it is a trip hazard and the lead is the cheapest part of the installation. Cross-pavement channels exist but they are a council scheme, not something an electrician can install on their own initiative — ask Barnet whether one runs on your street.
Is a 1930s Hendon semi likely to need a full rewire?
Usually not. Most of that stock was rewired once in the 1970s or 80s and what has aged out is the board, not the cable. We test first and tell you which it is: if the insulation resistance and continuity are sound, you want an RCBO board from £550 and the earthing and bonding put right alongside it, and that is typically the difference between a few hundred pounds and several thousand. Where we do find rubber or lead-sheathed cable, old round-pin accessories or cloth-covered flex at the ceiling roses, that is a different conversation and we will say so plainly.
Who notifies Building Control — you or me?
We do, through our registered competent person scheme, for the notifiable work we carry out. You get the certificate and the compliance notification follows automatically; you do not need to contact Barnet Building Control yourself. That is separate from planning, conservation area and Trust consents, which are yours to obtain and which we will help you document. More on how that works on our Part P certification page.
Book an electrician in Hendon or Golders Green
Call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453, or email info@faelectrical.co.uk. Tell us the full postcode, what the property is and what has happened, and we will tell you what it will take and what it will cost before we come. If it is an inspection we will give you the figure on the phone; if it is a fault we will give you the £108 attendance charge, which comes off the job if you go ahead.
NICEIC Approved Contractor · Part P registered · BS 7671 18th Edition · City & Guilds Level 3 · £5m public liability · 9.32/10 from 242 Checkatrade reviews. More background reading in our electrical guides, and the rest of the patch on our North London electrician page.