F & A Electrical covers the whole of the N1 postcode — Angel and Islington, Barnsbury, Pentonville, the Caledonian Road, Essex Road and Upper Street, Canonbury’s south end, De Beauvoir Town, Hoxton, the City Road and Old Street fringe and the canal corridor through Wenlock and City Road basins. NICEIC-approved, Part P registered, fully insured, certified to the current edition of BS 7671. Checkatrade 9.32 out of 10 from 242 reviews. Call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453.
This is the whole-postcode page. If you are specifically after Angel, Upper Street and Camden Passage, that detail lives on electrician in Angel; the Georgian terraces and squares at the Canonbury end are covered on electrician in Canonbury; and the borough-wide picture across all of Islington’s postcodes sits on electrician in Islington. Hoxton has its own page too — electrician in Hoxton — which matters more than it sounds, for the reason set out below. We work on exactly the same rates across all of them.
From our base at Ten 87 Studios, Markfield Road in Tottenham N15, N1 is about 25 to 30 minutes down the A1 through Holloway or the A10 and Essex Road. Highbury Corner and the Angel one-way system are the pinches, and anybody who promises you a fixed number of minutes through either has not driven them at half past five. We will tell you honestly when we can be there.
N1 is not one borough — and that catches people out
Most of N1 is the London Borough of Islington. But the postcode does not stop at the borough line. De Beauvoir Town and Hoxton are in Hackney, on N1 addresses. The western end runs up against Camden around King’s Cross, where the King’s Cross Central development has its own N1C postcode and is in Camden, not Islington. The southern tip around Old Street and City Road meets EC1 and the City of London. Two neighbours on the same N1 street can genuinely have different councils.
For the electrics themselves this makes no difference at all. Your certificate is a BS 7671 certificate either way, and we notify Part P work through our NICEIC registration whichever side of the line you are on. What it decides is practical:
- which Building Control holds the record of your board change or new circuit, which is the first thing a conveyancer’s search turns up;
- which licensing scheme applies if you let the property — check the council’s current scheme for your street rather than assuming, because they differ and they change;
- which planning department to ask about anything on the outside of the building, and which conservation area or Article 4 direction applies.
So when you ring, give us the full postcode, not just “N1”. It tells us which council we are dealing with before we start.
What we do across N1
- EICRs for landlords, sellers, buyers, freeholders and managing agents — see EICRs in Islington
- Fuse board and consumer unit replacement, certified and notified — fuse board replacement in Islington and consumer unit replacement
- Full and partial rewires, including period and listed properties — house rewires in Islington
- Earthing and bonding, fault finding and remedial work after a failed report
- New circuits — showers, cookers, kitchens, garden rooms, sub-mains to basements and lower-ground conversions
- EV charge points — EV charger installation in Islington
- Emergency fault finding — emergency electrician in Islington
- Commercial and three-phase work on the Upper Street, Essex Road, Chapel Market, Caledonian Road, Hoxton Street and City Road parades — commercial electrician, three-phase work, office electrician
Prices in N1 — inspection and testing
All figures are labour and certification only, including VAT. Materials are itemised separately. Our minimum charge is £108 inc VAT, one hour at our standard rate of £90 per hour plus VAT, and nothing is priced below it.
| Job | Price inc VAT |
|---|---|
| EICR, one-bedroom flat | £140 |
| EICR, two to three bedrooms | £170 |
| EICR, three to four bedrooms | £200 |
| EICR, larger house | £250 |
| EICR, five bedrooms and up | £300–£400 |
| Licensed HMO EICR | £250–£500, depending on units and circuits |
| Commercial EICR | From £220, priced per circuit |
| Attend, test and report on a fault or a single circuit | £108, and it comes off the job if we do the work |
| Out of hours, on top | £60 + VAT per half hour |
Prices in N1 — installation work
| Job | Price inc VAT |
|---|---|
| Consumer unit replacement, 6-way | From £550 |
| 10-way board | £650 |
| 12-way and above | £750 |
| Board replacement and EICR on the same visit | £690 |
| Main bonding, one service within reach | From £108 |
| Main bonding, gas and water both within reach | From £180 |
| Long or awkward bonding run, front meter box to a rear board | £240–£420 |
| New 16 mm² main earthing conductor | From £180 |
| Conversion to a TT earthing arrangement | From £850 |
| New single circuit, board to accessory, accessible route | £240–£420 |
| Flat rewire — one bed / two bed / three bed and up | £2,200–£3,200 / £3,000–£4,500 / £4,200–£6,000 |
| House rewire — small terrace through to large townhouse | £2,800–£4,000 · £3,500–£5,500 · £4,500–£8,000 · £6,500–£10,000 · £9,500–£14,000 |
| Partial rewire | £1,600–£3,000 |
| EV charge point | From £450 |
| Method statement and extra care on a listed or heritage property | From £240 |
The large Barnsbury and Canonbury townhouses sit at the top of that rewire ladder, and the price turns on circuit count and access, not on bedroom count. Fuller context on EICR costs in London, fuse board replacement, house rewire costs and flat rewire costs.
What we actually find in N1
Six things come up again and again across this postcode. None of them is exotic; all of them cost money if you discover them during a sale rather than before it.
- The main earth clamped to a water pipe the water company has since renewed in plastic. The clamp is still there, bright and tidy, bolted to a length of copper that now joins blue plastic at the boundary — so the installation has no means of earthing at all. This is the single most common serious finding we make anywhere in North London, and it reads as a C1 in the guidance most London inspectors work to. It is set out in full on no main earth — what does it mean?
- Main bonding that is undersized, missing, or bonded to the wrong thing. 6 mm² where 10 mm² is wanted on a modern PME supply; a gas bond that never followed the meter when it moved to an external box or into a communal cupboard; a clamp on the wrong side of the stopcock. See main bonding cost in London, which also covers the cases where you do not need it at all.
- Aged-out boards sitting behind perfectly sound rewires. A great many N1 houses and flats were rewired properly in the 1980s or 1990s and then left with the board of the day. The cables are fine; the protection is not. That is a board replacement from £550, not a rewire, and we will say so — the commonest misdiagnosis in this postcode is a quote for a full rewire on a sound installation.
- Georgian and Victorian houses cut into flats on one intake. Barnsbury, Canonbury, the Islington squares, Essex Road, De Beauvoir and the Caledonian Road side are full of four-storey houses split into three, four or five flats off a single supply, with twin-and-earth sub-mains running up the common stair and no way for a top-floor tenant to isolate without getting into somebody else’s hallway. We would far rather issue an honest “further investigation required” than a tidy-looking certificate that is not true.
- Lighting circuits with no circuit protective conductor. In the older terraces this is the finding that tips a job from a partial rewire to a full one, because there is no way to earth a metal fitting or a metal switch plate on a circuit that never had a CPC pulled in.
- Basement, lower-ground and loft conversions nobody told the council about. N1 has had thirty years of digging out basements and converting roof spaces. Spurs off first-floor circuits, sockets fed from a lighting circuit, buried cables outside safe zones, and no paperwork for any of it. Where it was notifiable work that was never notified, the position is set out on our Part P and Building Control notification guide, and the documents you should be holding are explained in what paperwork should I have after electrical work?
Listed buildings, conservation areas and the three consents
Islington has a very large number of listed buildings and a great many conservation areas, and the N1 squares and terraces account for a good share of both. Barnsbury, Canonbury, the Duncan Terrace and Colebrooke Row stretch along the New River line, the Upper Street and Camden Passage frontages and the Cloudesley and Thornhill grids are all in designated areas. Hackney’s side of the postcode has its own, including De Beauvoir Town. Which one covers your address is a question for the council, and worth asking before you plan anything on the outside.
The honest three-way split is this. Inside an unlisted house in a conservation area, nobody controls your electrics — the work is ours to design and certify, notified through Part P where it is notifiable. Outside, they can: an external meter cabinet, a charge point on the elevation, external lighting, a satellite dish or a cable run on a front wall can all need planning permission, and where an Article 4 direction is in force the permitted development rights you would otherwise rely on have been removed. If the building is listed, internal work can need listed building consent too, and the permitted development right for a wall-mounted charge point does not apply within the curtilage of a listed building at all. Full detail on rewiring a listed building or a house in a conservation area.
In practice, on a Georgian terrace, the work is in the method rather than the materials: lifting and relaying boards rather than cutting them, keeping drops out of plasterwork and cornice, running in existing voids and chases, and agreeing where a socket can and cannot go before anybody picks up a chisel. That is what the method statement line in the price table is for.
The canal corridor, the City Road towers and the warehouse conversions
The Regent’s Canal runs the width of N1, through the Islington Tunnel under Angel and out past Wenlock Basin, City Road Basin and on towards Kingsland Basin on the Hackney side. The old wharves and light-industrial buildings along it have been converted for thirty years, and they are a different job from the terraces.
What we typically meet in a canal-side or Old Street warehouse conversion is a building that came with a three-phase supply and was split informally as units were sold or let — sub-boards added over the years, nothing labelled, nothing recorded, and a distribution arrangement nobody can draw. On a first visit the single most useful thing we do is not replacing anything: it is tracing, labelling and recording what is actually there, so the next person has a starting point. Remedials in these buildings are usually about distribution and documentation rather than cable.
The newer towers along City Road and around the basins are the opposite problem again. The installation is sound and the board is modern; the constraints are capacity and permission. There are often no spare ways. The board may sit in a communal riser you do not control. Many are on a heat network with no gas in the flat at all — which means there is no gas service to bond, and that judgement has to be recorded in words on the certificate rather than left as a blank box. And a charge point in an allocated bay in an underground car park is a managing-agent permission question and a load assessment on the landlord’s sub-main before it is an electrical job; we will survey it and hand them the figures.
Where your flat ends and the freeholder’s installation begins matters here, and it is the thing leaseholders are most often surprised by: your certificate covers your flat from your consumer unit onwards, and the riser, the landlord’s sub-main and the communal areas need their own report. See EICRs for leasehold flats and communal areas.
Landlords and HMOs in N1
Every privately rented home in England needs its fixed wiring inspected and tested at intervals of no more than five years, with the report given to existing tenants within 28 days, to a new tenant before they move in, and to the council within 7 days of a request. Where the report calls for remedial or further investigative work, it has to be done within 28 days or sooner if the report says so — and a C1 is the definition of sooner. You also need written confirmation from the electrician that the work is complete, which we issue as standard.
Licensing is a separate matter from the national EICR duty, and it is where N1’s two-council split bites. Islington and Hackney each run their own schemes, with their own boundaries and conditions, and both change. Check the council’s current scheme for your street rather than relying on anything written on a website, including this one. If the property is a licensed HMO, the licence conditions can require more than the statutory minimum, and that is worth reading before you book.
Useful reading: landlord electrical safety certificates, landlord EICRs, HMO EICRs in London, what C1, C2 and C3 mean and what happens if an EICR is unsatisfactory.
Commercial work in N1
The parades we are on most are Upper Street, Essex Road, Chapel Market and Camden Passage, the Caledonian Road, Hoxton Street and the Kingsland Road end, and the City Road and Old Street office and restaurant strip.
Two things are worth saying plainly to anyone taking a unit here. First, a restaurant or shop unit that has been through four tenants always has undocumented additions behind the counter — so budget for remedials, not just for the report. Test before you sign: an unrecorded sub-board is a negotiating point before completion and a bill after it. Second, where there are flats above the shop, the landlord’s supply for the common parts and the stair lighting needs to be separated and properly recorded at fit-out, not argued about two years later when the stair light turns out to be on the shop’s circuit and the shop’s board is the one being isolated.
We quote commercial EICRs per circuit rather than by floor area, and we also handle emergency lighting and PAT testing for the same premises.
Nearby areas we cover
On the Islington side: Angel, Canonbury, Highbury N5, Holloway N7, Archway, Finsbury Park and N4, plus the borough page at electrician in Islington. On the Hackney side of N1: Hoxton, with Hackney and E8 beyond it. South into the City and the West End: electrician in central London. Everything we cover is listed on our London service areas page.
N1 questions we get asked
Am I in Islington or Hackney?
Most N1 addresses are Islington, but De Beauvoir Town and Hoxton are Hackney, and the King’s Cross end is Camden. Give us the full postcode and we will tell you — and more to the point, we will know which Building Control holds your records and which licensing scheme to point you at before we turn up.
How quickly can you get to N1?
Usually the same day if we have a slot, and often within the hour from N15 outside the rush. We will not give you a number of minutes. Highbury Corner, Angel and the City Road are all capable of swallowing twenty minutes without warning, and a promise we cannot keep is worth nothing to you.
My flat is in a converted Georgian house with one meter cupboard. Can you still certify it?
Usually, yes, but it depends what we can safely get access to and prove. Where the sub-main to your flat disappears into a shared cupboard we cannot open, or the arrangement cannot be verified, the right answer on the report is “further investigation required” rather than a clean pass. We will explain exactly what is needed and who has to open what. See what a limitation on an EICR means.
Can I have a charge point if I park on the street?
Not a wall point, no — there is no compliant way to run a cable from your house across a public footway, and we will not pretend otherwise. A cross-pavement channel is a council scheme, applied for through the council, not something an electrician installs on their own initiative. If you have off-street parking, a garage, or an allocated bay in a block, that is a different conversation and usually a straightforward one once permission is sorted. More on EV chargers in Islington.
Do I need a rewire or just a new board?
Across N1 it is far more often the board. We test before we quote, which is what the £108 attendance is for, and it comes off the price of the work if you go ahead. If the cables are sound and the problem is the protection, we will tell you that even though a rewire would be the bigger invoice.
Book an N1 electrician
Call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453, or email info@faelectrical.co.uk. We are NICEIC-approved and Part P registered, fully insured, certified to the current edition of BS 7671, and rated 9.32 out of 10 from 242 Checkatrade reviews. The minimum charge is £108 inc VAT for the first hour and it comes off the job if we go on to do the work.
If a solicitor has flagged something ahead of an exchange, say so when you call — see same-day EICRs in London. And give us your full postcode: in N1 it is the quickest way to tell us whose rules we are working to. More reading in our electrical guides.