Short answer: in England, only three kinds of domestic electrical job have to be notified to Building Control — installing a new circuit, replacing a consumer unit, and any addition or alteration to an existing circuit in a special location (a room with a bath or shower, or a room with a swimming pool or sauna heater). Everything else is non-notifiable. If we do notifiable work for you, we self-certify it through our NICEIC registration and the notification goes in within 30 days of completion, so you get a Building Regulations compliance certificate in the post without anyone ringing the council. If the electrician who did your last fuse board was not scheme-registered, the council should have been told before work started — and if nobody told them, the fix is a regularisation application, which in Haringey currently runs to about £424 on top of whatever needs putting right.
This is the question that lands on us most often from solicitors, not from homeowners. Somebody is three weeks from exchange, the buyer’s conveyancer has asked for a Part P certificate for the fuse board, and nobody can find one. So this guide covers both ends of it: what actually needs notifying and how it works when the job is done properly, and what your options are when the paperwork was never created in the first place.
We are F & A Electrical — NICEIC registered, Part P registered, based at Ten 87 Studios, Markfield Road, Tottenham N15, working across Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Camden, Barnet, Newham and Tower Hamlets. 9.32/10 from 242 Checkatrade reviews. Call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453.
What counts as notifiable electrical work?
Part P of the Building Regulations is one short requirement — reasonable provision must be made in the design and installation of electrical installations to protect people from fire and injury. The notification rules are separate from Part P itself. They sit in regulation 12(6A) of the Building Regulations 2010, and Approved Document P sets them out at paragraph 2.5. There are exactly three:
- The installation of a new circuit. A new way out of the board — a cooker circuit, a shower circuit, a garage or garden supply, an EV charger point, a new lighting circuit for a loft conversion.
- The replacement of a consumer unit. Any board change, even a straight swap, even if not a single cable moves.
- Any addition or alteration to existing circuits in a special location.
“Special location” has a narrow legal meaning here, and this is where most of the confusion starts. Under regulation 12(9) it means a room containing a bath or shower, and a room containing a swimming pool or sauna heater. That is the whole list. Diagram 2 in Approved Document P shows the zone around the bath or shower tray that counts — broadly, the space above and around it where water is expected.
Kitchens and outdoor work are not special locations. They were in the original 2005 version of Part P, which is why so much older advice onlinestill lists them. The 2013 edition of Approved Document P cut the list down to bathrooms, shower rooms, pools and saunas. So moving a socket in a kitchen is not notifiable on special-location grounds — though if the kitchen refit gives you a new dedicated circuit for the oven, that is notifiable, as a new circuit. There is more on that split in our guide to kitchen electrical requirements and rewiring.
Equally, work on fixed equipment is in scope even where the equipment plugs in — but it is only notifiable if it involves one of the three things above (Approved Document P, paragraph 2.8).
What is not notifiable — and why that still means paperwork
Everything else is non-notifiable: replacing a socket or a switch, adding a socket to an existing circuit outside a special location, replacing a damaged cable on a like-for-like basis, repairs, replacing a light fitting, adding a fused connection unit.
Non-notifiable does not mean uncertificated. All of it still has to comply with BS 7671, and it still gets written up — on a Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate (a “minor works cert”), with the test results for the circuit that was altered. That is the document that proves the job was tested, and it is the one that saves an argument later. If you are not sure which of the four documents you should be holding, we have set them side by side in what paperwork should I have after electrical work? Main protective bonding is a good example: on its own it is not normally notifiable in England, but it still comes with a minor works certificate — see what main bonding costs in London.
The practical upshot for a homeowner is that there are two different pieces of paper in play and they do different jobs:
- A BS 7671 certificate — an Electrical Installation Certificate for a new installation, rewire or board change, or a Minor Works Certificate for an alteration. This comes from the installer and records what was fitted and what it measured. Approved Document P paragraph 3.3 requires it for all work, notifiable or not.
- A Building Regulations compliance certificate — this only exists for notifiable work, and it comes from the competent person scheme (us via NICEIC), not from us directly. Paragraph 3.4(a). It is the document a solicitor is asking for when they say “Part P certificate”.
Neither of those is an EICR. An EICR is a periodic inspection of an existing installation, which grades what is already there — it says nothing about whether a past job was notified. Landlords need both kinds of document for different reasons; our landlord electrical safety certificate guide separates them out.
Where does Part P actually apply?
Wider than most people expect. Paragraph 2.2 of Approved Document P puts it in scope for:
- Dwellings — a house or a flat, including the parts outside the building: fixed outdoor lighting, air conditioning units, photovoltaic panels, pond pumps.
- Outbuildings — sheds, detached garages, domestic greenhouses. Which is why the supply to a garden office is squarely in scope; see EICRs for garages, outbuildings and garden offices.
- Common access areas of blocks of flats — corridors and staircases.
- Shared amenities in a block — a communal laundry, for example.
- Business premises connected to the same meter as a dwelling. This matters a great deal in North London, where half the shop parades have a flat above on one intake.
It does not apply to business premises with their own separate metering in the same building as a dwelling, or to lift power supplies in blocks of flats (paragraph 2.3). Those are still BS 7671 jobs and still get certified — they just are not Part P notifications. For a commercial unit, the inspection you want is a commercial EICR, plus PAT testing for the appliances in it.
Who notifies it — the three routes
Approved Document P paragraph 3.1 gives three ways of showing notifiable work complies. Which one applies to you depends entirely on who you hired.
1. Self-certification by a registered competent person
This is the normal route and the one we use. We are registered with NICEIC as a competent person scheme member, which means we can certify our own notifiable work. The installer or the registration body then has to notify the relevant building control body within 30 days of the work being completed (paragraph 3.4), and the occupier has to be given a Building Regulations compliance certificate.
From your side of it, this is invisible. You do not apply for anything, you do not pay a council fee, and you do not wait for an inspection. The notification is included in our price. The compliance certificate normally arrives from NICEIC within a few weeks of the job — which is worth knowing if you are selling, because it is not instant.
2. Third-party certification by a registered third-party certifier
An installer who is not scheme-registered can appoint a registered third-party certifier to inspect and test the work instead. The installer has to notify that certifier within five days of completion (paragraph 3.6). In practice this route is rare — finding a certifier willing to put their name to someone else’s installation, at a price that makes sense on one circuit, is harder than it sounds.
3. Notification to a building control body before work starts
If the installer is not registered and has not appointed a third-party certifier, they must notify a building control body before work begins (paragraph 3.8). That means a building notice or a full plans application to the council — or to an approved inspector — the council charging its fee, and the work being inspected and tested on the council’s terms before a completion certificate is issued.
The important word is before. This route cannot be used after the fact. Once the job is finished and the walls are closed up, the only thing left is regularisation, which is a different and dearer animal.
What does Part P notification cost in London?
All F & A prices below are labour and certification only — materials (boards, accessories, cable, EV units) are itemised separately. Our minimum charge is one hour at the standard rate: £90 + VAT = £108 inc VAT. Standard labour is £90/hr + VAT. Council fees are not ours and we never mark them up.
| What | Price (inc VAT, labour and certification only) |
|---|---|
| Notification of notifiable work we carry out, via NICEIC | Included — no separate charge |
| Attend, test and advise before you commit (what’s notifiable, what isn’t, what you already have) | £108 — comes off the job if you go ahead |
| Consumer unit replacement, 6-way, notified and certificated | from £550 |
| Consumer unit replacement, 10-way | from £650 |
| Consumer unit replacement, 12-way and above | from £750 |
| Board replacement plus a full EICR on the same visit | £690 |
| New single circuit — board to accessory, accessible route (cooker, shower, garage, garden) | £240–£420 |
| Addition or alteration to an existing circuit in a bathroom or shower room | from £180 |
| EV charge point, dedicated circuit, notifiable | from £450 |
| Earthing and bonding put right alongside notifiable work | £108 |
| Minor works certificate for non-notifiable work | Included in the job price |
| EICR, 1–2 bed flat / 3 bed house / larger | £140 / £170 / £200 and up — see EICR costs |
| Inspection and report on unnotified work done by someone else, so you know what you are dealing with | £108 |
| Council regularisation application fee (Haringey, small works) | roughly £424, paid to the council — not to us |
Rewires are priced separately because a notifiable rewire is a whole-installation job, not a circuit — the ladders are in our house rewire cost guide and the board-specific numbers are on the fuse board replacement hub.
What if the work was never notified?
This is the real question behind most enquiries, so here it is straight.
We cannot retrospectively notify work we did not do. No scheme-registered electrician can. Self-certification means certifying your own installation — NICEIC registration does not give us a power to issue a Building Regulations compliance certificate for a board somebody else fitted in 2019. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either selling you a worthless piece of paper or about to put their own registration at risk. If a trader offers you a “retrospective Part P certificate”, walk away.
What exists instead is regularisation: an application to the council for a Regularisation Certificate covering unauthorised work. Haringey’s own guidance is a fair model for how the home boroughs handle it:
- It is available for work that started on or after 11 November 1985, whether you did it or a previous owner did.
- The council may need to open up parts of the work or carry out tests to establish what was done — and can ask for work to be taken down or rebuilt. Photographs taken while the job was in progress genuinely help and can reduce what has to be exposed.
- In Haringey the regularisation charge is 130% of the building notice charge, with no VAT. For “all other works” estimated under £2,000 — which is where a board change or a circuit sits — the building notice charge in the published scheme is £326, so regularisation lands at roughly £424. Fees are set locally and reviewed annually, so check your own borough’s current charges scheme rather than taking that figure to the bank.
- The fee is non-refundable and an application cannot be withdrawn once submitted.
- A Regularisation Certificate provides “evidence (but not conclusive evidence)” that the requirements were met. The council is under no obligation to issue one, and there is no statutory time limit for a decision.
Two things have changed the stakes here. Under section 39 of the Building Safety Act 2022, the period for serving a section 36 notice — the notice that requires non-compliant work to be altered or removed — was extended in England from 12 months to ten years after completion. The old assumption that unnotified work quietly becomes untouchable after a year no longer holds. And the ten-year period is an enforcement window, not an amnesty: time passing does not approve the work, does not produce a completion certificate and does not make the installation safe.
Where we can help, honestly, is the technical half:
- Inspect and test what is actually there — a full EICR, or an inspection limited to the circuits in question, so you know whether the unnotified work was any good. Plenty of it is. Some of it is a C1 on the means of earthing and you needed to know that regardless of any paperwork.
- Put right whatever is wrong, and certify our remedial work properly — which, if it involves a new circuit, a board change or a special location, we notify in the normal way.
- Give you a written report that a conveyancer or a building control officer can actually read, setting out what is installed and how it tested. That is not a compliance certificate and we will never dress it up as one, but it is frequently what gets a sale over the line alongside an indemnity policy.
The decision about whether to regularise, insure around it, or replace the installation is yours and your solicitor’s. We are electricians, not conveyancers — but we will tell you what we found, in writing, and what it would cost to make it right.
Selling or remortgaging in London: what gets asked for
On a London sale the enquiry almost always arrives in the same shape: the TA6 form asks whether any electrical work has been done since 2005 and whether a Part P or Building Regulations compliance certificate exists. If the answer is yes-and-no, the buyer’s solicitor will usually want one of three things — the certificate, a regularisation certificate, or an indemnity policy plus a satisfactory electrical report.
A few practical points from the jobs we see:
- Check before you assume it is missing. If the electrician was scheme-registered, the notification exists even if your copy of the certificate does not. You can look up a registered installer and request a duplicate compliance certificate through the competent person register at electricalcompetentperson.co.uk, or directly from the scheme the installer belonged to.
- The borough’s building control department holds the record for the other route. If the work went through a building notice, the completion certificate is on the council’s file — worth a call to Building Control before you pay for anything.
- Allow time. A compliance certificate for work we do today takes a few weeks to come through the scheme. A regularisation application has no statutory deadline at all. Neither fits comfortably into a two-week exchange.
- A clean EICR is not a substitute for a compliance certificate, and no honest electrician will pretend it is — but it is very often what makes the indemnity route acceptable to a lender.
Which London borough holds your record?
Notifications go to the building control body for the area the property sits in, and in London that is a borough question rather than a postcode question. The two do not line up. N11 is split between Barnet and Enfield, N22 between Haringey and Enfield, HA8 between Barnet and Harrow along the old Watling Street line, and N4 can be Haringey, Hackney or Islington depending on which side of the street you are on. If you are not certain, tell us the full postcode and we will tell you which council we would be notifying.
We notify in all our home boroughs: Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Camden, Barnet, Newham and Tower Hamlets, plus central EC and W1 work. Area pages with local prices and the wiring we actually find are on the London service areas hub, and the borough-by-borough routing index is on electrician North London.
Two overlays worth knowing about, because they catch people out. In a conservation area or on a listed building, the electrics inside an unlisted house are nobody’s business but Part P — but external work can need the council’s consent, and inside a listed building even internal alterations can need listed building consent. That is set out properly in our guide to a listed building or conservation area rewire. And for HMOs, Part P notification sits alongside licensing conditions and fire alarm requirements — see HMO EICRs and HMO electrical compliance. Always check your council’s current licensing scheme for your street rather than assuming what applied last year still does.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Part P certificate the same as an electrical safety certificate?
No, and they are not interchangeable. A Building Regulations compliance certificate (what people call a “Part P certificate”) proves that notifiable work was notified. An electrical safety certificate usually means either a BS 7671 Electrical Installation Certificate for new work, or an EICR on an existing installation — in the private rented sector, the EICR is the document the regulations demand. A landlord with a valid EICR and no compliance certificate for a 2021 board change has one problem; a landlord with the certificate and an out-of-date EICR has a different one. Our landlord compliance checklist lists what you should be holding.
Can I replace my own consumer unit if I notify Building Control myself?
In law, a homeowner can apply for a building notice and do notifiable work on their own home under the council’s supervision. In practice, almost nobody gets through it. The council will want the installation inspected and tested to BS 7671, which needs calibrated test equipment and the competence to interpret the results, and it will charge its fee whether or not the work passes. A board change on a London installation also tends to expose things that need deciding on the spot — no main earth, undersized bonding, a borrowed neutral between two flats. By the time you have hired someone to test it, you have paid twice. Our view on this is on do I need an electrician to change a consumer unit.
Does adding a socket in my bathroom need notifying?
There should not be a general-purpose socket in a bathroom at all, other than a shaver supply unit outside the zones. But yes — any addition or alteration to an existing circuit within a special location is notifiable, and a room with a bath or shower is a special location. Adding a shaver point, moving a light, fitting an extractor fan off the lighting circuit, installing an electric shower: all notifiable. The zones and what is allowed where are covered in bathroom electrical regulations.
Is an EV charger notifiable under Part P?
Yes — it is a new circuit, so it is notifiable, and we notify it through NICEIC like any other new circuit. There is a separate layer on top of it: a wall-mounted charge point on a listed building or inside its curtilage does not get the permitted development right, and an Article 4 direction can bring external installations under planning control in some conservation areas. The honest position on street parking has not changed either — there is no wall point for a car parked on the street, and no cable across a public footway. A cross-pavement channel is a council scheme, not something an electrician can grant. The detail is in our EV charger installation guide.
What happens if I just do nothing about unnotified work?
Often, nothing, for years. But the risk is no longer the one most people have in mind. Since the Building Safety Act 2022 extended it, the council’s power to require non-compliant work to be altered or removed runs for ten years after completion in England rather than twelve months. More commonly the bill arrives at the point of sale, when a buyer’s solicitor wants the position resolved and you have no time to resolve it. And none of the paperwork says anything about whether the installation is safe — that is what an inspection is for, and it is the part we would get done first regardless of what you decide about the certificate.
Do you charge extra for the notification?
No. If the job is notifiable, the notification and the Building Regulations compliance certificate are part of the price we quote — there is no separate admin fee and no council charge to pass on, because the self-certification route does not involve one. The only council fee in this whole guide is the regularisation charge for work somebody else failed to notify, and that is paid directly to the borough.
Book a notifiable job, or get the position checked
If you need a board change, a new circuit or bathroom work done properly and notified, we will quote it, do it, certify it and notify it through NICEIC — one price, no council paperwork at your end. If you have inherited work nobody told the council about and you need to know what you are actually dealing with before you talk to a solicitor, £108 gets us out to inspect and report on it, and that comes off the job if remedial work follows.
F & A Electrical — NICEIC registered, Part P registered, fully insured, 9.32/10 from 242 Checkatrade reviews. Ten 87 Studios, Markfield Road, London N15 4QA. Call 07407 627542 or 07500 721453, and tell us the full postcode.
Related reading: what Part P certification is, in brief · fuse board replacement London · main bonding cost · EICR cost London 2026 · all our electrical guides.