Electrician in North Wales and North West England

Part P of the Building Regulations covers electrical work in homes in England and Wales. Some jobs have to be notified to building control, and a registered electrician does that for you. Pick the job.

Certificates matter more than people expect. They are the first thing a buyer's solicitor asks for, and unnotified work found at sale can hold the whole thing up while it gets inspected and certified after the fact.

We work both sides of the border, and the rules are not the same. A landlord with a house in Ruthin and a flat in Chester is following two different sets of obligations.

If your property is in Wales

The Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 and the fitness for human habitation regulations that came with it have applied since 1 December 2022. Every home let on an occupation contract needs a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report.

• The installation must be inspected and tested at least every five years, or sooner if the last report asked for a shorter interval. If it named a shorter interval, that one applies and the five years does not.
• Your contract-holder gets a copy within 14 days of the occupation date. If the inspection happens later, during the contract, they get it within 14 days of the inspection date.
• Any investigatory or remedial work needs written confirmation to the contract-holder, again within 14 days.

Wales is stricter on the paperwork than England, and that is where most landlords come unstuck. A valid report sitting in a drawer is not compliance. Miss the window for handing it over and the home counts as unfit for human habitation even when the wiring is perfectly sound, and rent is not payable while it stays that way.

Alarms in Wales

The same regulations set the alarm standard, and it is higher than most people expect.

• At least one mains-powered smoke alarm on every storey, all interlinked, either hard wired or by radio, installed to BS 5839-6.
• A carbon monoxide alarm in every room containing a gas, oil or solid fuel appliance.
• Wales counts a gas hob as a gas appliance, so a kitchen with a gas cooker needs a carbon monoxide alarm. England excludes cookers. This one catches people who own property in both countries.

If your property is in England

The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 apply to most tenancies.

• Inspection and testing at least every five years, or more often if the report says so.
• A copy to the tenant within 28 days, to a new tenant before they move in, and to the council within seven days if they ask for it.
• Where the report finds a C1, a C2 or an FI, the work has to be done within 28 days, or sooner if the report specifies, followed by written confirmation to the tenant and the council.
• Councils can impose a financial penalty of up to £30,000 for breaches.

For landlords

We carry out the inspection, issue the report, and quote separately for anything that needs putting right, so you can see what is a genuine safety item and what is an improvement you can choose to leave. If remedial work is needed we confirm it in writing in the form your council or your contract-holder will expect. If you hold several properties we will keep an eye on when each report falls due and tell you before it lapses rather than after.

The rules here are summarised, not quoted. The full guidance is on gov.wales for Wales and gov.uk for England. If you are unsure which applies to a particular let, ring and ask.

An Electrical Installation Condition Report is a check on the fixed wiring in a building. The cables, the consumer unit, the sockets, the switches, the earthing and bonding. It is not a check on your kettle or your telly.

What gets checked

Part of it is looking. Damaged accessories, signs of overheating, undersized cable, missing protection, work someone has done badly. The rest is testing with instruments, with the power off for sections of the job, measuring earth continuity, insulation resistance, loop impedance and the timing of the residual current devices. The report records what we found and gives the installation an overall result.

Satisfactory or unsatisfactory

Those are the only two outcomes. The codes against individual items decide which one you get.

• C1, danger present. Someone is at risk of injury now. We make it safe before we leave and tell you straight away.
• C2, potentially dangerous. Not live danger this minute, but it needs putting right. A C2 makes the report unsatisfactory.
• C3, improvement recommended. Not a fault, and it does not fail the report. Usually something that met the standard when it was installed and would be done differently today.
• FI, further investigation required. Something we could not get to the bottom of on the day that could be hiding a fault. An FI also makes the report unsatisfactory.

A report full of C3s can still be satisfactory. People see a page of codes and assume the worst, and it is often better news than it looks.

On the day

A typical three bedroom house takes around three to four hours, longer if the wiring is old or the consumer unit is awkward to get at. The power goes off in stages, so tell us beforehand if you work from home, if anyone in the house relies on powered equipment, or if there is a freezer full of food. We need access to the consumer unit, to the sockets and switches, and to the loft if the wiring runs through it. Dogs and cats are usually happier shut in one room while we are opening things up.

Afterwards

You get the report, and if anything is coded we quote for the work separately so you can see the cost of each item. Once remedial work is done you get a certificate for it, and the report can be reissued as satisfactory where that is appropriate. The report also carries a date for the next inspection.

How often

Rented homes, at least every five years in both Wales and England, and there is more on that in the landlord guide. Owner occupied homes, ten years is the usual advice, sooner if you are buying, if the house has been extended or rewired in part, if you have had a flood, or if the consumer unit still has rewireable fuses in it. If something is tripping repeatedly, do not wait for the interval.

Most of the serious jobs we get called to gave a warning first. Here is what to look for, and what is worth doing something about.

Signs worth a phone call

• A smell of hot plastic or fish near a socket, a switch or the consumer unit.
• Scorch marks, discolouration, or a plug that is hot when you unplug it.
• A breaker that trips again and again, or a fuse that keeps blowing.
• Buzzing or crackling from a switch, socket or the board.
• Lights that flicker or dim when a big appliance starts up.
• Cracked accessories, loose sockets that move when you pull a plug out, or bare cable anywhere.

If you get a shock off an appliance or a fitting, however small, turn the circuit off at the consumer unit and leave it off. A tingle is a fault, not a quirk.

Your consumer unit

It is doing two separate jobs. The breakers protect the cables from overload and short circuit. The residual current devices protect people, by cutting the supply in a fraction of a second when current leaks to earth, usually through someone. An old board with rewireable fuses and no RCD protects the cables and not you.

Press the test button on each RCD about every six months. It should trip instantly. If it does not, ring someone. Boards installed since 2016 are metal for a reason, and surge protection is worth having if you have a lot of electronics or a heat pump.

Learn where your main switch is and make sure everyone in the house knows. In an emergency, that is the thing that matters.

Sockets and leads

A four way extension lead is rated at 13A in total, not 13A each. Heaters, kettles and irons should go straight into a wall socket. Never run one extension lead into another. If you find yourself needing adaptors in every room, you need more sockets, and adding them is a small job.

Outside

Anything outdoors needs to be RCD protected and rated for the weather, and buried cable needs to be armoured and at a sensible depth. Garden offices, hot tubs, pond pumps and outside lights all want a proper circuit rather than a lead out of a window. If you are digging or putting fence posts in, know where the cable runs.

Bathrooms

Bathrooms have zones, and what you can install where depends on the distance from the bath or shower. Ordinary sockets are not allowed within three metres of the bath or shower zone, shaver units aside. Mirrors with lights and heated towel rails are fine when they are the right rating and on the right protection.

Where the rules sit

The wiring standard is BS 7671, currently the 18th Edition. Amendment 4 was published on 15 April 2026 and applies to new work from 15 October 2026. Your existing installation does not become illegal when the standard changes. It is assessed against the rules in force when it was installed, which is why a report can read satisfactory with a handful of C3s against it.

Certain work in your home is notifiable under Part P of the Building Regulations, including a new circuit, a consumer unit change, and work in a bathroom. We are registered with NAPIT, so that work gets certified and notified to your local authority, and you get the paperwork. It matters more than people think. The certificates are the first thing a buyer's solicitor asks for.

Everyone calls it PAT testing. The formal name is in-service inspection and testing of electrical equipment, and the difference matters more than it sounds, because a lot of what people believe about it is not in any law.

What the law says

The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require electrical equipment to be maintained so that it does not become a danger. That is the duty. No regulation says test everything every twelve months, and no regulation says every item needs a sticker. The annual habit came from insurers and from guidance, not from statute.

What you need is a system you can show works, and a record of it.

How often is often enough

Frequency follows risk. A drill on a building site takes a hammering and gets checked every few months. A desktop computer that never moves might go years between formal tests with user checks in between. A kettle in a village hall kitchen sits somewhere in the middle. The IET Code of Practice sets out intervals by environment and equipment type, and the sensible answer for most small businesses is an annual visit covering the higher risk items, with a longer cycle for the rest.

Most faults are found by looking, not by testing. Frayed leads, cracked plugs, taped up joints, the wrong fuse, a cable pulled out of its grip. Training staff to spot those is worth more than any certificate.

Who needs it

• Landlords, for any appliance you supply with the property. There is no fixed legal interval, but if a tenant is hurt by your cooker you will be asked what you did to know it was safe.
• Holiday lets, where the turnover of guests is high and the kit takes a battering.
• Offices, shops, salons, workshops and cafes, usually as an insurance condition.
• Village halls, clubs and churches, particularly where the public brings equipment in.
• Tradespeople, for tools and leads taken on site, where site rules often require it.

What you get

Each item is inspected, tested where the type requires it, labelled and logged. You end up with a register listing every appliance, its location, the result and the date, plus a note of anything that failed and why. Failures are usually a lead or a plug, and we will normally put those right there and then rather than hand you back a box of things not to use.

Be wary of anyone who promises you a precise saving. What you save depends on your tariff, your house and how you live in it. What follows is what actually moves the needle, in the order it moves it.

Heat and hot water first

If you heat with electricity, that is where nearly all your money goes, and controls are the cheapest fix. A working thermostat and timer, set to match when the house is occupied, beats heating rooms nobody is in. If you have a hot water cylinder, put the immersion on a timer rather than leaving it to a switch on the wall that gets forgotten.

If you are on Economy 7 or a similar tariff, the point is to move what you can into the cheap hours. Cylinder, dishwasher, washing machine, car. If you are on that tariff and running everything at teatime, you are paying the premium and taking none of the benefit.

Lighting is small but easy

An LED lamp uses roughly a tenth of the power of the halogen it replaces. The saving per lamp is modest, so start with the fittings that are on longest, usually the kitchen, the hall and the living room, and do not bother rushing to change a bulb in a cupboard nobody opens. Buy decent ones. Cheap LEDs fail early, flicker on dimmers, and the dimmer often needs changing with them.

The things that barely register

Standby is real but it is pennies for most households. A set top box, a console and a couple of chargers add up to a few pounds a year, not a bill. Turn them off by all means, but if the bill has jumped, standby is not why.

A bill that has jumped for no reason

That is worth investigating rather than economising around. An immersion heater with a failed thermostat, an underfloor heating circuit stuck on, a faulty fridge or freezer running constantly, a pond pump nobody remembers. We can meter individual circuits and find what is drawing power when the house is quiet. It is often a single faulty item, and finding it pays for the visit.

The bigger changes

An EV charger on the right tariff changes the arithmetic of running a car more than anything else on this page. Solar and battery storage can work well, and whether they work well for you depends on your roof, your usage pattern and what you are paying now. We will give you a straight answer about whether it is worth it for your house, including when the answer is no.