Paperwork After Electrical Work

The short answer. After any electrical work on your home, you should be handed a BS 7671 certificate from the electrician who did it — an Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC) if the job was a new installation, a new circuit, a rewire or a consumer unit change, or a Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate (MEIWC) if it was an addition or alteration to a circuit that already existed. That certificate comes with its test results attached. If the work was notifiable under Part P of the Building Regulations, you should also receive a second, completely separate document: a Building Regulations compliance certificate, which is issued by your electrician’s registration scheme rather than by your electrician, normally within a few weeks of the job finishing. An EICR is a fourth thing again — a condition report on an installation that already exists, not a certificate for work carried out.

So: one certificate from the electrician, always. A second certificate from the scheme, only when the work was notifiable. And an EICR only when somebody has asked for an inspection rather than a job.

We are F & A Electrical, an NICEIC-approved, Part P registered contractor based at Ten 87 Studios, Markfield Road, Tottenham N15. We issue this paperwork on every job, and a fair share of our week is spent sorting out other people’s — a conveyancer’s enquiry three days before exchange, a letting agent asking for something the landlord never received, a homeowner holding a one-page “certificate” with no test results on it. Call 07407 627542 (or 07500 721453) and we will tell you straight whether what you have is enough.

Which document should I have for my job?

This is the table most people are actually looking for. Four documents, four different purposes, and they are not interchangeable.

Document	What it is for	Who issues it	When you get it
Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC)	New installation work: a rewire, a new consumer unit, a new circuit, a new EV charge point, a garden office supply	The electrician who designed, installed and tested it	On completion, with a Schedule of Inspections and a Schedule of Test Results attached
Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate (MEIWC)	An addition or alteration to a circuit that already exists: an extra socket, a new light point, main bonding, a replacement accessory	The same electrician	On completion, with test results for the circuit that was worked on
Building Regulations compliance certificate	Proof that notifiable work was notified to Building Control. This is the one solicitors chase	The competent person scheme your electrician is registered with — not the electrician	After the job is notified; the notification is due within 30 days of completion
Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR)	An inspection and test of an installation that already exists, reporting its condition against BS 7671	The inspecting electrician	After the inspection, as a report with observations and codes — not proof that any work was done

If you want the EIC and EICR distinction on its own, we have written it up separately: EIC vs EICR — the difference explained. And if what you are really chasing is the notification side, that lives on our Part P and Building Control notification guide, which covers cost, who notifies what, and the position when work was never notified at all.

What is an Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC)?

An EIC is the document issued when new electrical installation work has been designed, built, inspected and tested. In practice you should get one for:

a full or partial rewire, house or flat
a consumer unit or fuse board replacement
any new circuit — a shower, a cooker, a kitchen ring, a car charger, a sub-main to a garage or garden office
a new supply to an outbuilding, an annexe or a commercial unit
a conversion to a TT earthing arrangement, or a new earthing and bonding installation

The certificate itself is only the front page. What makes it worth anything is what is attached to it, and that is the part that goes missing most often. An EIC has three signature roles on it — design, construction, and inspection and testing. On a domestic job all three are usually signed by the same electrician, which is perfectly normal. On a larger job, or where somebody else specified the work, they may be three different people. If a certificate has one scrawl across all three boxes and no name you can look up, that is worth asking about.

It also carries a recommended date for the next inspection. That is a recommendation from the person who tested it, not a legal expiry date — but for a rented property the five-year clock under the private rented sector regulations is a legal matter, and we cover that in when an EICR needs renewing.

What is a Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate?

A minor works certificate — MEIWC, or “minor works” on most people’s paperwork — is for an addition or alteration to a circuit that already exists, where no new circuit has been created. That is a far bigger share of real electrical work than people expect:

adding a socket, or converting a single to a double, on an existing ring
adding a light point or moving a switch on an existing lighting circuit
replacing a shower or cooker with one on the same circuit
installing or upgrading main protective bonding
replacing a damaged accessory where testing is needed to confirm the circuit is still sound

A minor works certificate is still a test certificate. It records the circuit that was worked on, the protective device, continuity, insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance and the RCD test result for that circuit. What it does not do is certify the rest of your installation, and an honest one says so on its face. If your electrician alters one lighting circuit and hands you a document that appears to bless the whole house, something has been filled in wrongly.

A useful rule of thumb: a new circuit gets an EIC. A change to an existing circuit gets a minor works certificate. If anybody tells you a small job is “too small for paperwork”, that is not how BS 7671 works — it is how a trader who does not test works.

What is a Building Regulations compliance certificate, and when should it arrive?

This is the document that causes most of the confusion, because it does not come from your electrician and it does not exist for every job.

Under Part P of the Building Regulations in England, certain electrical work in a dwelling is notifiable to Building Control. Notifiable work is a short and specific list: a new circuit, a consumer unit replacement, or an addition or alteration to an existing circuit in a special location. A special location, for these purposes, means a room containing a bath or a shower, or a room containing a swimming pool or sauna heater.

That list surprises people, so it is worth stating what is not on it. Kitchens and outdoor work are not special locations. They were in the 2005 version of the Approved Document and came off the list in the 2013 edition, which is the current one. So a kitchen refit is only notifiable if it brings a new circuit with it — which, with an induction hob and a proper layout, it usually does, but not because the room is a kitchen. Plenty of websites still have the old list up, including, until recently, one of ours.

Where the work is notifiable and your electrician is registered with a competent person scheme (we are registered with NICEIC), the sequence is:

We complete the work and issue you the EIC or minor works certificate.
We notify the job to our scheme. The notification is due within 30 days of completion.
The scheme notifies your local authority’s Building Control and issues you, as the occupier, a Building Regulations compliance certificate.

So the compliance certificate arrives separately, usually by post or email from the scheme, a few weeks after we have packed up. If it has not reached you after a month or so, chase it — and chase your electrician first, because the commonest reason it never arrives is that the job was never notified. There are other routes: a third-party certifier, where the installer notifies the certifier within five days; and the building control body route, where an unregistered installer must notify the council before work begins. That last route cannot be used after the fact, which is the hinge of the whole unnotified-work problem. The full detail, including what regularisation costs, is on our Part P notification guide, and the plain-English version of what Part P actually is sits on what is Part P certification.

One important consequence: a Building Regulations compliance certificate is not a substitute for the BS 7671 certificate, and the BS 7671 certificate is not a substitute for it. On a notifiable job you need both. The first says the installation is safe and was tested; the second says the council knows about it.

Why an EICR is not a certificate for work done

An Electrical Installation Condition Report is a snapshot of an existing installation’s condition. It lists observations with codes — C1, C2, C3 and FI — and concludes satisfactory or unsatisfactory. It is the right document when a landlord needs their five-yearly inspection, when a buyer wants to know what they are taking on, or when a managing agent asks for the communal areas to be checked.

It is the wrong document when somebody has just installed something. We are asked for this fairly often: “can you do an EICR to certify the new consumer unit?” No — new work gets an EIC from whoever installed it. An EICR on a brand new board tells you the board is in good condition, which you would hope, and tells your solicitor nothing about whether the job was notified.

It is also the wrong document to prove a job was finished. An EICR can be issued on an installation with work half done, and it will simply record what it found. If you want to know what an EICR does and does not cover, see what an EICR checks and what a limitation on an EICR means — limitations are the part of the report people skip and then argue about.

What should be attached to my certificate?

This is the quality test, and it takes ten seconds. Any EIC should come with two schedules:

a Schedule of Inspections — the visual and constructional checks, ticked or marked not applicable with a reason;
a Schedule of Test Results — a line per circuit, with the protective device type and rating, cable sizes, continuity, insulation resistance, polarity, earth fault loop impedance and RCD operating times.

A minor works certificate carries the test results for the circuit altered on the certificate itself, so it is one or two pages rather than four, but the numbers still have to be there.

If you have a single page with a company logo, a job description and a signature, and no numbers anywhere, you do not have a test certificate. You have a receipt with the word “certificate” on it. That matters practically, not just pedantically: without the test results nobody can tell later whether the circuit was sound when it was handed over, which is exactly the question a buyer’s solicitor, an insurer after a fire, or the next electrician will ask.

Two other things worth checking on the front page: the extent of the installation covered (does it say the whole house, or the one circuit that was altered?) and any departures from BS 7671 recorded with reasons. A departure properly recorded is fine. A departure quietly unmentioned is not.

Do I get paperwork for work that is not notifiable?

Yes. This is the single most common misunderstanding we meet, and it is worth being blunt about it: a BS 7671 certificate is required for all electrical work, whether it is notifiable or not. Notifiability only decides whether a second document — the Building Regulations compliance certificate — exists.

So if we add a socket in your living room, that is not notifiable, there is no compliance certificate, and you still get a minor works certificate with test results. If we fit main bonding to your gas and water, same again. If we replace your board, that is notifiable, so you get an EIC and a compliance certificate from NICEIC.

Some jobs come with their own paperwork on top. A domestic fire detection and alarm system is commissioned and certificated to BS 5839-6, separately from the electrical certificate for the circuit feeding it — see fire alarm installation. Emergency lighting is commissioned and certificated to BS 5266. PAT testing produces an asset register and labels, not a certificate in the BS 7671 sense, and it is a different exercise from an EICR — the fixed wiring and the kettle are two separate questions.

What does the paperwork cost in London?

Nothing on this list is a charge for paperwork as such. The certificate is part of doing the job properly; what you are paying for is the labour and the testing behind it. All figures are labour and certification only, including VAT — materials are itemised separately. Our minimum charge is £108 inc VAT, which is one hour at our standard rate of £90 per hour plus VAT, and nothing is priced below it.

What you need	Labour and certification, inc VAT
Duplicate copy of a certificate for work we carried out	No charge
Minor works certificate for an alteration we carry out (socket, light point, accessory)	Included in the job, from £108
Main bonding to one service within reach, with minor works certificate	From £108
Main bonding to gas and water, both within reach	From £180
New single circuit, board to accessory, accessible route, with EIC	£240–£420
Consumer unit replacement with EIC and Part P notification — 6-way	From £550
10-way board / 12-way and above	£650 / £750
Board replacement and EICR on the same visit	£690
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, or a licensed HMO	£300–£400
Commercial EICR	From £220, priced per circuit
Attend, inspect and write up somebody else’s undocumented work	£108, and it comes off the job if we do the remedial
Part P notification through our NICEIC registration	Included — no admin fee
Council regularisation of unnotified work	Paid to the council, not to us, and never marked up
Out of hours, on top	£60 + VAT per half hour

The one fee anywhere in this guide that is a real cost rather than part of a job is council regularisation, and that only arises when somebody else’s work was never notified. Councils set it as a percentage of the equivalent building notice charge — on Haringey’s published scheme the lowest band works out at roughly £424 — but charges differ by borough and change, so check your own council’s current charges scheme rather than taking a figure off a website, including this one. Fuller cost context sits on EICR cost in London, fuse board replacement and EICR remedial work costs.

What if I have lost it, or never got it in the first place?

Deal with these as two different problems, because the fixes are different.

You had it and lost it

Start with the electrician who did the work. Electricians are expected to keep records of the certificates they issue, and a reputable firm will reissue a copy without fuss — we do, free. If the firm has gone, the scheme is the next stop: where the work was notified, the scheme holds the notification record and can usually confirm it and reissue the Building Regulations compliance certificate, normally for a small fee. Your local authority Building Control holds the record too, and will do a search; that is also how a conveyancer checks. What nobody can reissue is the test results for a job somebody else tested. If they are gone, they are gone, and the only honest substitute is a fresh inspection.

You never got it

This is the harder one, and we will not pretend otherwise. No scheme-registered electrician can retrospectively notify somebody else’s work. If a trader offers you a “retrospective Part P certificate” for a board change another firm did, that document is worthless, and the fact that it is on offer tells you something. The building control body route exists but had to be used before the work started.

What we genuinely can do is three things. We can inspect and test what is there and tell you in writing what condition it is in — that is an EICR, and it is real evidence about safety even though it is not evidence of notification. We can remedy and certify our own work, so anything we replace or alter from here is properly documented and notified. And we can write the position up plainly for a conveyancer, who will usually deal with the gap through an indemnity policy or a retention rather than a certificate. We are electricians, not conveyancers, and we will say so — but a clear report from a registered contractor is normally what unsticks a sale.

Worth knowing for perspective: the Building Safety Act 2022 extended the enforcement window for a notice requiring non-compliant building work to be altered or removed from twelve months to ten years after completion in England. That is an enforcement window, not an amnesty — time passing does not make unnotified work compliant, and the safety question is separate from the paperwork question in any case.

What will my solicitor or letting agent actually ask for?

If you are selling, the property information form asks you to declare building work, and electrical work carried out since 1 January 2005 — the date Part P came into force — brings up the notification question. In practice the enquiry lands as “please provide the electrical certificates and Building Regulations compliance certificate for the rewire/new board”. What satisfies it is the BS 7671 certificate plus the compliance certificate, or a Building Control completion certificate where the council route was used. If you only have one of the two, say so early rather than at exchange; see EICRs when selling a house in London.

If you are buying, read what you are given rather than ticking it off. A compliance certificate for a 2009 board change tells you the job was notified; it tells you nothing about the condition of the installation now. That is what an EICR is for, and on a North London terrace it is £170 well spent before you commit.

If you are letting, the agent wants the EICR, not the installation certificates — though the installation certificates are what prove any remedial work was actually done and tested. See landlord electrical safety certificates and our landlord compliance checklist.

If you own a leasehold flat, the split matters: your certificate covers your flat from your consumer unit onwards. The riser, the landlord’s sub-main and the communal areas are the freeholder’s, with their own report — EICRs for leasehold flats and communal areas sets out who owns what.

What paperwork do landlords have to hand over, and when?

For privately rented homes in England, the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 set out both the inspection and the paperwork. The installation must be inspected and tested at intervals of no more than five years, and the report has to be distributed:

to existing tenants, within 28 days of the inspection;
to a new tenant, before they occupy;
to a prospective tenant, within 28 days of a request;
to the local authority, within 7 days of a request;
and a copy retained to give to the inspector at the next inspection.

Where the report requires remedial or further investigative work, it must be carried out within 28 days — or sooner if the report specifies a shorter period, and a C1 is the definition of sooner. You then need written confirmation from the electrician that the work is done and the installation now meets the standard, supplied to the tenant and, within 28 days of completion, to the local authority on request. That written confirmation is a real document in its own right, and it is the one landlords most often forget to ask for. We issue it as standard alongside the minor works or installation certificate for whatever we put right.

Frequently asked questions

Is an EICR the same thing as an electrical safety certificate?

“Electrical safety certificate” is not a technical term — it is what letting agents, councils and most customers call an EICR, and in a rental context that is almost always what is meant. It is not the same as an EIC or a minor works certificate, which are issued for work carried out. If someone asks you for an “electrical safety certificate”, ask them whether they want a condition report on the existing installation or the certificates for a particular job. Nine times out of ten in a letting it is the former and in a sale it is the latter. See also do I need an EICR.

My electrician gave me one page with no test results. Is that valid?

Not as a test certificate, no. An EIC needs its Schedule of Inspections and Schedule of Test Results; a minor works certificate needs the test figures for the circuit altered. Go back and ask for the schedules — if the testing was done, producing them is five minutes’ work. If they cannot be produced, the honest conclusion is that the installation was not tested, and the way to find out where you stand is an inspection. We will attend and test for £108, which comes off the price of any remedial work we then do.

Can you issue a certificate for work another electrician did?

No, and nobody can. A certificate carries the signature of the person who designed, installed, inspected or tested the work, and we cannot sign for work we did not do or see installed. What we can do is inspect and test it and issue an EICR, which is a genuine, usable document about its condition. We can also certify anything we then alter or replace ourselves. Anyone offering to “certify” or “retrospectively notify” somebody else’s installation is selling you a piece of paper that will not survive a conveyancer’s look at it.

Do I really need a certificate for one extra socket?

Yes — a minor works certificate. It is not notifiable, so there is no Building Regulations compliance certificate, but the circuit still has to be tested after being worked on and the results recorded. It takes us a few minutes at the end of the job. The reason it matters is cumulative: a house with twenty undocumented small alterations is the one where the EICR comes back unsatisfactory and nobody can say which change caused what.

How long should I keep all this?

Indefinitely, and hand it on when you sell. There is no expiry on an installation certificate — it is the permanent record of what was installed and tested on that date, and the next electrician will use it as the starting point. Keep the schedules with it; they are the useful part. A folder, or a scan in the cloud, saves a great deal of trouble later. If you are buying, ask for the previous owner’s certificates as part of the enquiries rather than hoping they turn up with the keys.

Who is allowed to issue these certificates?

Someone competent to inspect and test to BS 7671, with the right calibrated instruments and the current edition of the standard. For the notifiable element, self-certification is only open to an installer registered with a competent person scheme — which is what Part P registration means in practice and why we are registered with NICEIC. More on that on who can carry out an EICR and why NICEIC registration matters.

My certificate says there is a “departure from BS 7671”. Should I worry?

Not necessarily. A departure recorded with a reason is a legitimate part of the certificate — an existing arrangement that does not meet the current standard but is not unsafe, for instance. What should concern you is a departure nobody mentioned, or a certificate with an unsatisfactory finding on it that was signed off anyway. If your paperwork has something on it you do not understand, ring us and read it out; we will tell you what it means without charging you for the phone call.

Get your paperwork sorted, or get a job certified properly

We are an NICEIC-approved, Part P registered electrical contractor working out of Ten 87 Studios, Markfield Road, Tottenham N15, across Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Camden, Barnet, Newham and Tower Hamlets, plus the central EC, WC and W1 streets. Checkatrade rating 9.32 out of 10 from 242 reviews. Fully insured, certified to the current edition of BS 7671.

Whether you need a job doing and documented, a duplicate certificate, or an honest read on a document somebody has handed you, call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453. Our minimum charge is £108 inc VAT for the first hour, and it comes off the job if we go on to do the work. Give us your full postcode when you call — it tells us which borough’s Building Control holds your record, which matters more often than people expect.

More guides: all our electrical guides · no main earth — what it means · how long an EICR takes · commercial EICR costs · landlord EICRs. Areas we cover: London service areas · electrician in Tottenham · electrician in North London.

What Paperwork Should I Have After Electrical Work?