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Care Home and Supported Living EICR London: Rules and Cost

Short answer: yes, and which rule you are under depends on whether your residents hold a tenancy. Supported living — where each resident has a tenancy or a licence to occupy — is a private let, so a satisfactory EICR every 5 years is a legal requirement and the resident gets a copy. A CQC-registered care home, where residents have no tenancy, is not covered by those regulations at all: there it is the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 and CQC Regulation 15 that bite, and 5 years is the accepted maximum because that is what BS 7671 and your insurer expect. Either way the hard part is not the testing. It is isolating circuits in a building full of hoists, nurse call and people who cannot be moved. F & A Electrical prices care settings per circuit and works evenings and weekends so the home keeps running. Call 07407 627542.

Does a care home legally need an EICR?

This is where most managers get a confusing answer, because two completely different sets of rules are in play and which one applies to you turns on the paperwork your residents signed, not on the building.

Setting What applies Interval What you must do with the report
Supported living — resident holds a tenancy or licence, it is their only or main home The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations — a specified tenancy, like any private let 5 years maximum, and at a change of occupancy if the report has expired Copy to each resident within 28 days, to a new resident before they move in, to the council within 7 days if asked. Remedials within 28 days
Registered care home — personal or nursing care provided, no tenancy Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 reg 4(2), systems maintained so as to prevent danger; CQC Regulation 15, premises and equipment properly maintained No figure in law. BS 7671 and IET Guidance Note 3 put residential accommodation at 5 years maximum; some insurers ask for 3 Keep it in the compliance file with evidence the remedials were done
Extra care or a scheme with self-contained flats let on tenancies, plus communal areas Both. The flats are specified tenancies; the communal parts sit with the freeholder or managing agent 5 years for the flats, 5 years for the communal areas Flat reports to the tenants; a separate communal-area report for the landlord’s supply
Shared supported housing let room by room Often an HMO too, so the borough’s licence conditions apply on top 5 years, and Haringey, Hackney and Enfield often ask at licence renewal As for any let, plus whatever the licence says — see HMO EICRs

The practical upshot: if you run supported living and you have no valid EICR, you are not merely below best practice, you are in breach of the private rented sector rules and the penalty is a civil fine per breach, not a warning letter. Our guide to what the EICR fine actually is explains the figure and why you will see two different numbers quoted.

If you run a registered home, nobody will fine you under those regulations — but a fire, a shock to a resident or a staff injury puts the Electricity at Work Regulations and CQC Regulation 15 in front of you instead, and the first document requested will be the last EICR and proof the C1s and C2s were cleared.

How often should a care home have an EICR?

Five years is the ceiling, not the target. In a care setting we normally suggest shorter, for reasons that have nothing to do with selling more tests:

Alongside the five-yearly report, we suggest an annual visual condition check of accessible accessories and the boards — quick, cheap, and it catches the cracked faceplate in the day room before an inspector does.

What makes a care home EICR different from any other commercial test?

Technically the tests are the same ones. Operationally it is a different job, and an electrician who has only done shops and offices will get it wrong.

You cannot just switch things off. In a shop you kill the board, test, and put it back. In a care home, isolating a circuit may take out a ceiling track hoist mid-transfer, a nurse call panel, a stairlift, a door access system, a pressure-relieving mattress or a fridge holding medication. Every one of those has a person attached to the consequence.

So the first thing we do is not a test. It is a walk-round with the manager and the maintenance person to produce an isolation plan: which circuits feed what, which can go in the day, which need the resident out of the room first, which we do at 6 am before breakfast, and which we are not going to isolate at all.

Limitations get written down and agreed in advance. BS 7671 requires the extent and limitations of the inspection to be agreed with the person ordering the work and recorded on the report. In a care home that list is longer than usual and it is legitimate — “live testing only on the nurse call supply”, “bedrooms 4 and 11 not accessed, residents receiving end-of-life care”. What is not legitimate is vague limitations and a satisfactory outcome hiding an untested third of the building. Ask any contractor to show you their limitations wording before you appoint them.

Sampling should be minimal, and residents set the timetable. On large installations the guidance allows inspection by sample; in a building full of vulnerable people we test the lot, over more visits if that is what it takes, and we say so on the certificate. We work round mealtimes, medication rounds and personal care, which means early mornings, evenings and weekends — so the job spreads over more days than the circuit count suggests. Budget for that rather than being surprised by it.

Care home and supported living EICR cost in London

These are our own labour-only prices, inc VAT, for North and North East London. Our standard rate is £90 per hour plus VAT and the minimum charge for any visit is £108 inc VAT. Remedial materials — boards, devices, accessories — are supplied at cost and itemised; we do not mark them up.

Setting Typical circuits EICR (labour only, inc VAT) Time on site
Supported living house, 3–5 residents, one consumer unit up to 12 from £220 2–3 hours
Supported living let room by room, 6–10 rooms, sometimes a second board 13–24 £15 per circuit (≈ £360 at 24) 3–5 hours, often two visits
Small residential care home, up to 15 beds, single-phase, 2 boards 20–30 from £450 1 day, usually split
Care home 16–40 beds, three-phase intake, several sub-boards 40–80 £15 per circuit, £13 per circuit above 60 2–3 days across evenings and a weekend
Nursing home 40+ beds, or a site with more than one building 80–150+ quoted per board after a free walk-round 3–5 days
Communal areas and landlord’s supply only, extra care scheme 4–12 from £140 2–3 hours
Out-of-hours working so the home keeps running — before 8 am, after 6 pm, Saturday — +25% —
PAT testing — profiling beds, hoists, mattress pumps, kitchen, laundry, resident equipment — £5 per item, £108 minimum — see PAT testing added to the visit
Emergency lighting annual 3-hour discharge test and BS 5266 certificate — from £140 half a day plus a return to check recharge
Consumer unit or distribution board replacement after an unsatisfactory report — from £550 per board, board and devices at cost — see board replacement 1 day per board
Additional dedicated circuit (hoist, laundry, kitchen appliance, nurse call) — from £140 2–4 hours

For comparison with other non-domestic premises, our commercial EICR cost guide has the full per-circuit breakdown, and EICR cost London 2026 covers domestic pricing if you also let ordinary flats.

What usually fails in a care home EICR

Finding Code Why it matters in a care setting Fix (labour only, inc VAT)
Socket and lighting circuits with no RCD protection — typically an older board in a converted house C2 Wet rooms, sluices and laundries, plus residents who may not let go of a faulty appliance RCBO board from £550 per board
Circuits nobody can identify, boards with no schedule, “spare” written on a live circuit C3, C2 if a device is wrong for the load You cannot write an isolation plan for a circuit you cannot trace — so in an emergency staff switch off the wrong thing Circuit identification and new schedule from £140 per board
Ceiling track hoist or stairlift fed from a socket circuit or an unfused spur C2 or FI A hoist needs a known, correctly protected supply, not one shared with whatever is plugged in next door Dedicated circuit from £140
Nurse call spurred off lighting, or with no clear isolation point C3, C2 if the wiring is damaged It is the residents’ only way of summoning help and must survive a fault elsewhere Dedicated supply from £140
Extension leads and multi-way adaptors behind beds for chargers, pumps, TVs and lamps C3, C2 where overloaded or damaged Bedside is the highest-risk spot in the building — bedding, oxygen concentrators, limited mobility Extra sockets from £108 per visit, usually 2–4 points per bedroom
Assisted bathroom accessories at the wrong IP rating, or a shaver socket inside a shower zone C2 Water, bare skin, and a resident being handled by staff Correct accessories from £108, wet-room lighting from £150
Emergency lighting that fails the 3-hour test, or is not a separate certificated system An observation — emergency lighting is not part of the EICR A power cut during a night evacuation. The EICR is often where the problem first surfaces 3-hour test and certificate from £140
No main protective bonding to incoming water or gas — common in converted Victorian houses C2 The whole earthing arrangement depends on it, and it is invisible until someone looks under the sink Main bonding from £140

If you are not sure what the codes mean, our guide to C1, C2 and C3 on an EICR explains which findings make a report unsatisfactory, and EICR remedial work cost covers what the fixes typically come to.

What the EICR does not cover — and inspectors will ask for

An EICR is a report on the fixed wiring. It is not a whole-building safety file, and the commonest gap we see in a care home compliance folder is someone assuming it covers more than it does. Separate records you will be asked for:

One technical point worth knowing: most care homes are ordinary installations under BS 7671, not “medical locations” under Section 710. A nursing home with a treatment room where certain procedures are carried out can fall under Section 710, which brings in tighter earthing and supply-continuity requirements. If you think that might apply to a room in your building, say so when you book and we will look at it specifically rather than discovering it on the day.

Care homes and supported living in North London — what we actually find

Most of the supported living we test in Haringey, Enfield and Barnet is in large converted houses — Edwardian and interwar semis on the bigger plots around Winchmore Hill, Palmers Green, Southgate, Finchley and Whetstone, and Victorian terraces in Tottenham, Wood Green and Hackney. They were family homes, then bedsits or an HMO, and now a supported scheme. Each change added wiring and nobody wrote it down.

The recurring findings follow from that history: a 1990s board with two RCDs covering everything, so one fault darkens the whole house; a garage or outbuilding on a sub-main with no record of what feeds it; a loft room converted without notification. Purpose-built homes in Enfield and Newham are tidier at the intake but carry the heaviest kitchen and laundry loads and the most undocumented equipment additions.

We are based in Tottenham N15, ten minutes from most of Haringey and half an hour from anywhere in the home boroughs — which is why we can do a 6 am start or a second evening without charging for the travel. See the areas we cover.

Care home and supported living EICR — FAQs

Is a supported living house legally required to have an EICR?
If the residents hold a tenancy or a licence to occupy and it is their only or main home, yes — it is a specified tenancy under the private rented sector electrical safety regulations. Five years maximum, a copy to each resident within 28 days, a copy to the council within 7 days of a request, and remedial work completed within 28 days. This catches a lot of providers who think of themselves as care rather than as landlords.

Does CQC ask to see the EICR?
Inspectors do not always ask for the document by name, but they ask how you know the premises and equipment are safe and properly maintained, which is Regulation 15. A current satisfactory EICR, evidence the remedials were done, plus PAT, emergency lighting and fire alarm logs, is the complete answer. Producing it quickly is itself a good sign to an inspector.

Can you test without disturbing residents?
Not entirely — some tests need the circuit dead. What we can do is plan it so the disturbance is tiny and predictable: a walk-round first, an agreed isolation plan, early mornings and evenings for the circuits that matter, and rooms skipped and recorded as a limitation where a resident should not be moved. Nurse call, hoists and anything medical are identified before we touch a board.

How long does a care home EICR take?
Circuit count says one thing and operational reality says another. A small supported living house is a morning. A 30-bed home is realistically two to three days spread across evenings and a weekend, not two solid days. See how long an EICR takes.

What happens if the report comes back unsatisfactory?
C1 means danger present and we make it safe the same visit. C2 means potentially dangerous and it has to be fixed — for supported living, within 28 days or sooner if the report specifies. We quote the remedials itemised so you can take them to your board or your landlord, and we do not require you to use us for the fix. What happens after an unsatisfactory EICR walks through it.

Who pays — us or the landlord?
If you lease the building, the fixed installation within your demise is usually yours under the lease and the landlord holds the communal and structural side. If you are the provider and also the landlord to your residents, both are yours. Read the repairing obligation in the lease before you accept a quote for the whole building. For local authority and NHS-commissioned providers we issue certificates in the format the commissioner asks for and copy them to a compliance inbox as well as the manager.

Book a care home or supported living EICR

Tell us the number of beds or rooms, how many distribution boards you have and whether your residents hold tenancies, and we will give you a firm per-circuit price before we visit. The walk-round to build the isolation plan is free. Call or text 07407 627542 — we will work round your rounds, not the other way about.

F & A Electrical is an NICEIC Approved Contractor, Part P registered and works to BS 7671 18th Edition. Based in Tottenham N15, covering Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Camden, Barnet, Newham and Tower Hamlets. Rated 9.32/10 from 242 reviews on Checkatrade.

More reading: all our electrical guides · commercial EICR cost · HMO EICR · nursery and childminder EICR · EICR cost London · fuse board replacement · PAT testing