EICRs Explained for Teesside Landlords
What an EICR is, when rented homes need one, what the codes mean and what remedial work really costs, explained without the jargon.
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The two-minute version
An EICR, or Electrical Installation Condition Report, is a formal inspection of a property's fixed wiring: consumer unit, circuits, sockets, switches and earthing. For rented homes in England it is a legal requirement, with a satisfactory report needed at least every five years, given to tenants, and council fines for landlords who skip it. It is not a certificate that everything is new. It is a professional judgement that the installation is safe to keep using.
Two things follow from that. A satisfactory report is not a promise that nothing will ever go wrong; it is a statement about the condition of the installation on the day it was tested. And an unsatisfactory report is not a disaster, it is a list of specific faults with a deadline attached. Most reports on older Teesside rental stock come back with something on them, and most of those somethings are ordinary.
The duty itself comes from the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, and the government's guidance sets out the tenant copies, the remedial deadline and what a council can do about a missing report.
Three deadlines sit in regulation 3 itself, and they are worth knowing as three rather than one. Inspection and testing at intervals of no more than five years. The report to each existing tenant within 28 days of the test. And, the one landlords are least likely to have heard of, the report to the local housing authority within seven days of a written request from them. That last deadline is short, it starts when the request arrives rather than when you find the paperwork, and it is the reason a report is worth keeping somewhere you can reach from your phone.
What the codes on the report mean
Reports flag observations with codes, and the codes decide what you must do about them. Two of the four make a report unsatisfactory and start a 28 day clock, one is advice you can take or leave, and one means the inspector could not establish something on the day. A good electrician talks you through each observation in plain English rather than leaving you to decode abbreviations, but it is worth knowing the shape of it before the report lands.
| Code | What it means | What it obliges you to do |
|---|---|---|
| C1 | Danger present. Somebody could be hurt as things stand | The inspector makes it safe on the spot. You fix it immediately, and the report is unsatisfactory |
| C2 | Potentially dangerous. Safe today, unsafe if one more thing fails | Fix it. The report stays unsatisfactory until you do |
| FI | Further investigation needed, because something could not be established on the day | Have it investigated. The report is unsatisfactory until it is resolved |
| C3 | Improvement recommended | Nothing is required. The report passes. It is advice, and usually worth doing at the next opportunity |
What tends to come up in Teesside rentals
Across the older terraces and 1930s semis that make up much of the Teesside rental stock, the usual suspects are old fuse boards without RCD protection, which is the most common C2 we see, missing earth bonding to the gas and water pipes, lighting circuits with no earth at the switch, which is normal in wiring installed before the mid-1960s, and the legacy of decades of DIY, such as the junction box in the loft that nobody can explain. None of these are exotic and all of them have known, quotable fixes. What varies between properties is how many of them turn up in the same house, which is why a fixed remedial quote is worth more to you than an hourly rate.
What the report does not cover
An EICR looks at the fixed wiring, meaning everything from the intake and the consumer unit out to the sockets, switches, light fittings and fixed appliance connections. It does not look at your tenant's kettle, their extension leads or the washing machine they brought with them. Testing portable appliances is a separate job, and it is not the thing the legislation asks landlords for.
It also does not cover the gas installation, whose separate duty the HSE sets out for landlords under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. It needs its own annual safety check by a Gas Safe engineer, and it does not cover the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, which carry their own separate duties. Landlords often assume that one visit settles all three. It does not, and the three run on different cycles, which is why the compliance diary matters more than any individual certificate sitting on it.
Whoever does it should be on the competent person register, which covers every government-authorised scheme — checking that takes a minute and settles more than a logo on a van does.
Getting it done without drama
Book the test before the current report expires, or during a void period; give the electrician access to every room and to the consumer unit; and insist that remedial work is quoted as a separate fixed price, so the person marking the homework is not paid by the fault. That separation is how our electrical team runs EICRs across Teesside: test, plain-English summary, fixed remedial quote, certificate emailed the same day. Pair it with the between-tenancy checklist and the whole compliance-and-refresh job becomes one scheduled visit. Questions about your property? Ask us here.
