Short answer: the letting agent books the work, but the landlord is the duty holder. The agent arranges access, holds the keys, chases the paperwork and pays the invoice out of the rent account — but every legal duty under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 sits with the landlord, and every technical judgement on the certificate sits with the electrician. An agent cannot carry the landlord’s duty for him, and cannot sign off our work. Once all three parties understand that, agency work runs smoothly. When they don’t, you get the arguments we see every week: a certificate addressed to the wrong name, remedial work stalled because nobody had authority to spend, or a landlord who has been “compliant” for three years with a document that was never valid.
We are an NICEIC-approved, Part P registered contractor based in Tottenham N15, working across Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Camden, Barnet, Newham and Tower Hamlets. We do a lot of work for letting and managing agents in North and East London, and this page sets out exactly how we handle it — who we treat as the client, what we will and won’t put our name to, what it costs, and how we deal with access, remedials and portfolio scheduling. Call 07407 627542 (or 07500 721453) to set up an account.
Who is the client when a letting agent books an electrician?
The person who instructs us and the person who owns the installation are often two different people, and the certificate has to reflect the second one. On an EICR the “client” box names the person for whom the inspection is being carried out — the landlord, or the freeholder for communal work. The agent’s name goes in as the contact or the instructing party, not as the client.
This isn’t pedantry. The client box is who the report belongs to, who the limitations were agreed with, and who can rely on it. A report addressed to “Smith & Co Lettings” at the agent’s office is a report about a property the agent doesn’t own, agreed with someone who has no authority over the installation. If that landlord later changes agent — and most do, eventually — he is left holding a document naming a company he no longer deals with. We have seen local authority officers query exactly that.
So when an agent books us, we ask for three things up front: the landlord’s name as it should appear on the certificate, the property address, and confirmation that the agent has authority to instruct the work. That last one takes ten seconds and saves a lot of grief. It is the same principle we set out in detail on who signs off communal electrical work — the installation’s owner is the client, and the electrician only signs the technical boxes.
Does the agent or the landlord hold the legal duty?
The landlord. The 2020 Regulations put the duties on “the private landlord”, with no mechanism for transferring them to an agent. A management agreement can oblige the agent to arrange the inspection, hold the record and serve the copies — and most do — but it cannot move the liability. If the five-year inspection is late, it is the landlord the local authority serves notice on, and the landlord who faces the financial penalty, which can run to £30,000 per breach. Our page on EICR fines for London landlords covers how boroughs are actually using those powers.
What this means in practice for an agent is that you are exposed contractually rather than statutorily. If your agreement says you’ll keep the EICR current and you don’t, the landlord’s penalty becomes a claim against you. That is why the good agencies we work with run a diary of expiry dates rather than waiting for a renewal prompt, and why they want the certificate issue date — not the booking date — recorded against the property.
Two other duties sit alongside it and are worth keeping in the same diary. Under the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations, as amended in 2022, there must be a smoke alarm on every storey used as living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed combustion appliance — a gas boiler, a solid fuel stove, an oil burner. Gas cookers are excluded from that requirement. The landlord must also repair or replace an alarm once told it is faulty. For licensed HMOs, the EICR is annual rather than five-yearly, and the fire detection standard is a different conversation again: see HMO EICR London.
Can an agent sign off electrical work?
No, and neither can the landlord. Signing off is a technical act by a competent person, and it is the electrician who did the work. On an EICR, the inspector signs the inspection, testing and assessment boxes and takes responsibility for the outcome. On an installation, the installer issues the Electrical Installation Certificate or Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate. Nobody else’s signature belongs on either document.
Where notification under Part P of the Building Regulations is needed — a new circuit, a consumer unit replacement, or work in a special location such as a room containing a bath or shower, or a swimming pool — the registered installer notifies, and building control issues the compliance certificate. An agent cannot notify on our behalf and does not need to. What an agent sometimes can do, and should, is tell us whether earlier work at the property was notified, because unnotified past work shows up as a question mark on an inspection and the landlord ends up paying to prove something that was never recorded.
The flip side: an agent’s instruction is not a technical opinion either. If you tell us a board needs replacing because the last electrician said so, we will look at it and form our own view. Sometimes the board is fine and the problem is the earthing arrangement. We would rather have that argument before the invoice than after.
What does an EICR cost through an agent in London?
The same as it costs anyone else. We don’t inflate agency rates and we don’t pay referral commissions, which keeps the numbers honest in both directions. Prices below are labour and certification only, inclusive of VAT; materials and accessories are itemised separately at cost. Our minimum charge is £108 inc VAT (one hour at the standard rate of £90 per hour plus VAT), and nothing is priced below it.
| Work | Price (inc VAT) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| EICR — studio / 1-bed flat | £140 | 5-yearly for a single let |
| EICR — 2-bed flat | £170 | 5-yearly |
| EICR — 3-bed flat or terrace | £200 | 5-yearly |
| EICR — 4-bed house | £250 | 5-yearly |
| EICR — 5-bed+ house | £300–£400 | 5-yearly |
| EICR — licensed HMO | £250–£500 | Annual under licensing |
| EICR — commercial unit | from £220 | Shops and offices on a parade |
| Portfolio batch (2+ properties) | 10–15% off per property | Booked as one visit run |
| Minimum charge / small works visit | £108 | One hour, labour only |
| Standard labour thereafter | £90 per hour + VAT | Itemised on the invoice |
| Consumer unit replacement | from £550 | 6-way £550 · 10-way £650 · 12-way+ £750 |
| Consumer unit + EICR, same visit | £690 | Saves a second attendance fee |
| Earthing and main bonding upgrade | £108 | When done alongside other work |
| PAT testing | ~£5 per appliance | Minimum charge £108 applies |
| Out of hours | £60 + VAT per half hour | Evenings, weekends, early access slots |
Fuller breakdowns sit on EICR cost London 2026, fuse board replacement London and PAT testing London. One thing to flag to landlords early: the EICR fee buys the inspection and the report, not a pass. If the installation is unsatisfactory, the remedial work is a separate quote, and that is where the real money usually is — see EICR remedial work cost.
Who serves the EICR on the tenant, and when?
The duty is the landlord’s; the agent nearly always does it. The deadlines are worth having on a card by the desk:
- Existing tenants — 28 days from the inspection. A copy of the report, not a summary and not a verbal assurance.
- New tenants — before they occupy. Not on move-in day, not in the welcome pack a week later.
- Prospective tenants — 28 days from a written request.
- Local authority — 7 days from a written request.
- Remedial work — 28 days from the report, or sooner if the report specifies a shorter period, with written confirmation of completion to the tenant and, where they asked, the local authority.
That last clock is the one agents miss, because it starts on the date of the report rather than the date the landlord gets round to approving the quote. We date our reports the day we inspect and we put the remedial deadline in the covering email, so there is no ambiguity about when the 28 days run out. If a landlord is slow to authorise, the agent at least has it in writing that the clock was flagged.
At a change of tenancy there is a separate question — whether you need a fresh EICR for a new let when the existing one still has years to run. Usually you don’t, and we set out the exceptions on EICR for a new tenant.
What happens when remedials cost more than the agent’s authority?
This is the single biggest cause of delay on agency work, so we have a standing way of handling it. Most management agreements give the agent a spending limit — commonly £250 or £500 — above which the landlord has to authorise. An unsatisfactory EICR on an older North London flat quite often lands above that: a board swap, a bonding upgrade and a couple of circuits re-terminated will clear £900 without anything exotic going on.
So we split the quote. Anything that is genuinely urgent — a C1, danger present — we make safe on the day as part of the attendance, because leaving a live hazard in a tenanted property isn’t a decision that waits for an email. Everything else comes back as an itemised quote grouped into “must do to make the report satisfactory” and “recommended but not a failure”. The agent can authorise what sits inside the limit immediately and send the rest up. It keeps the 28-day clock moving on the parts nobody needs to argue about.
On codes, so the agent isn’t fielding it blind: C1, C2 and FI make a report unsatisfactory. C3 does not. A C3 is an improvement recommendation — the installation complies with the standard it was built to but not with current practice. No landlord needs to spend money on a C3 to be compliant, and any contractor telling you otherwise is selling. We say so on the report in plain words so the agent doesn’t have to translate.
How do we handle access when the tenant is in?
An EICR needs the power off circuit by circuit, which means somebody has to be in and the visit takes two to four hours in a typical flat. Agents handle this better than landlords do, because you already have the relationship and the notice templates. What helps us:
- Key safe or office keys, with the tenant notified in writing. Having a key is not the same as having permission; we won’t enter on a key alone if the tenant hasn’t been told.
- At least 24 hours’ written notice, and in practice a week. Tell the tenant the power will be off intermittently, so they move anything that matters out of the freezer and off the desk.
- Named access contact and a phone that gets answered on the morning of the visit. Most abortive visits we attend are a locked door and a voicemail.
- Tell us about the meter location. Communal cupboards, locked risers and head-height boards behind kitchen units all change how long we need.
When a tenant refuses outright, the landlord cannot force entry and neither can you. There is a proper sequence — written request, explanation of the legal duty, a record of every attempt, and if it comes to it, evidence that the landlord took all reasonable steps, which is an explicit defence in the Regulations. We’ve set the whole sequence out on tenant refusing access for an EICR. Tenants have their own rights in all this, which are worth knowing before you write the letter: tenants’ rights and landlord responsibilities.
What agents ask us for that we can’t do
Not a complaint — these come up often enough that it saves everyone a phone call if they’re written down.
- “Can you backdate it to when the last one expired?” No. The report is dated the day of the inspection. A backdated certificate is a false document and it is the electrician’s registration on it.
- “The landlord just needs a pass certificate.” There is no such thing as a pass certificate. An EICR records what we found. If what we found is unsatisfactory, the report says so, and the fix is remedial work, not a different piece of paper.
- “Can you leave the limitations off?” No. Every inspection is sampled and the extent and limitations are agreed with the client before we start. Removing them makes the report say something broader than we actually checked.
- “Can you do the EICR and ignore the communal board?” Yes, and we will say so as a limitation — the flat’s installation stops at the landlord’s supply. Who deals with the communal side is a separate question: EICR on a leasehold flat and the communal areas.
- “Can you certify work another contractor did?” Not as an installation certificate — only the installer can issue that. We can inspect and report on it, which is a different document and usually the right one anyway.
Blocks, communal areas and the managed-block question
A letting agent managing individual flats in a block is in a different position from a managing agent acting for the freeholder or the residents’ company. If you manage a block, you may well be the person in control of the communal installation, and that brings the risers, landing lights, door entry, communal smoke detection and emergency lighting into scope — plus a permit-to-work duty under the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 for anyone working on a live or shared supply.
If you only let flats inside the block, you have no authority over the communal side and shouldn’t be instructing work on it, however reasonable the request from your landlord. We check who the client is before we touch a riser, every time. The full picture is on who signs off communal electrical work in London.
Communal fire detection and emergency lighting have their own inspection regimes, separate from the EICR: fire alarm installation and emergency lighting certificates.
Portfolio scheduling, voids and batch visits
The cheapest EICR is one done at a void. Nobody to give notice to, no furniture to move, power off as long as we need, and any remedial work happens before a tenant is inconvenienced by it. If you can get us in during the gap between tenancies, do — and if the board is marginal, that is the moment to replace it rather than six months into a tenancy.
For portfolios we batch by postcode. Four flats in N15 and N16 on the same morning costs less per property than four separate attendances across four weeks, which is where the 10–15% comes from — it is a routing saving, not a discount we’re inventing. We can work to a schedule of expiry dates if you send one, and flag renewals a couple of months ahead so the landlord has time to budget. One invoice per property or one per batch, whichever your accounts system prefers.
Our patch is North and East London from the N15 base — Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Camden, Barnet, Newham and Tower Hamlets, plus central EC and W1 where it makes sense. Full list on London service areas, and we’re straight about drive times rather than claiming to cover everywhere. Where licensing affects what’s needed — additional or selective licensing changes the EICR frequency and sometimes the alarm standard — check the council’s current scheme for your street, because the boundaries move and they are not the same in two neighbouring wards.
Frequently asked questions
Can a letting agent be fined for a missing EICR?
Not under the 2020 Regulations — the financial penalty, up to £30,000 per breach, is served on the landlord. But if your management agreement makes the inspection your responsibility, the landlord’s penalty is very likely to come back at you as a contractual claim. The practical answer is to treat the expiry date as your deadline, not his.
Whose name goes on the EICR when an agent books it?
The landlord’s, as the client. The agent goes on as the contact or instructing party. For communal work in a block, the client is the freeholder or the residents’ management company, not the agent and not a leaseholder.
Do we need a new EICR every time a tenant changes?
Not if the current one is still in date — the requirement is at least every five years, with the report given to the new tenant before they occupy. There are good reasons to inspect at a void anyway, and some situations where you genuinely should; those are covered on our change of tenancy page.
Can you invoice the agency and still address the certificate to the landlord?
Yes, and that is the normal arrangement. The payer and the client are two different fields. We’ll invoice the agency, the rent account or the landlord directly — whichever you set up — while the report names the landlord as client throughout.
How quickly can you attend an emergency at a managed property?
Same day where we can, and we’ll tell you honestly on the phone if we can’t rather than taking the booking and letting the tenant wait. We don’t advertise a guaranteed response window because traffic across North London doesn’t permit one. Out-of-hours attendance is charged at £60 + VAT per half hour on top of the standard rate.
Do you work for agents outside North and East London?
Sometimes, for existing accounts, if the property is worth the drive from N15. We don’t take on far-south or far-west London work, because an hour each way makes us expensive and slow for you and we’d rather say so than take the booking.
Set up an agency account
If you manage property in North or East London and want a contractor who will tell your landlord the same thing he tells you, call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453, or email info@faelectrical.co.uk. We’re NICEIC approved, Part P registered, work to BS 7671 18th Edition and fully insured, and we’re Checkatrade approved with a rating of 9.32 out of 10 from 242 reviews.
Send us a schedule of properties and expiry dates and we’ll come back with a visit plan by postcode. More background reading in our electrical guides, and the landlord-facing version of all this is on landlord electrical safety certificates.