Testing, decoded.Including the codes nobody explains to you.

A periodic inspection and test — the report is usually called an EICR, an Electrical Installation Condition Report — looks at the whole fixed installation rather than the bit that has stopped working. The consumer unit, the cabling, earthing and main bonding, the accessories, and anything that has been added over the years by somebody who perhaps should not have.

Part of it is visual: scorch marks, cracked accessories, undersized cable, a bathroom fitting that has no business being where it is. Part of it is instrument testing with the power off — continuity of protective conductors, insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance, RCD operating times. Together they tell you whether the installation is safe to carry on using.

It ends in a single verdict, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, plus a list of coded observations. The verdict is the bit letting agents care about; the observations are the bit that tells you what to do next.

Since 2020 the electrical safety regulations for the private rented sector have required landlords in England to have the fixed installation inspected and tested at least every five years, to give the report to tenants and to supply it to the local authority on request. A new tenancy starting with an out-of-date report is the usual moment people discover this.

Where the report comes back unsatisfactory, or carries C1, C2 or FI observations, the remedial work has to be carried out within 28 days — sooner if the report says so — and written confirmation obtained. Which is why it pays to have the inspection done a few weeks before the tenancy starts rather than the week of.

A & P Moyes quotes remedial work separately from the inspection, so you can see plainly what is required to make the installation satisfactory and what is merely advisable. Being given one number for "the certificate and whatever it needs" is how people end up paying for improvements they never agreed to.

There is no legal obligation, and no need to book one every year out of nerves. The usual guidance is roughly every ten years for an owner-occupied home, and rather sooner if you have just bought a property, if you are about to spend money on a kitchen or an extension, if the board is a rewireable fuse box, or if anything has been added by a previous owner and you have no idea by whom.

The most useful time is before other work starts. An inspection that finds the main bonding missing is a cheap fix while the floor is up and a miserable one after the tiler has finished.

Allow a few hours for an average house, longer for a larger property or a commercial unit. The power goes off for parts of it, because the instrument testing cannot be done live. Cupboards under the stairs and in front of the board need to be reachable, and loft hatches unblocked if the wiring up there has to be seen.

Afterwards you get the report with the observations coded and explained, and a separate price for anything that wants putting right. Nothing gets done on the strength of the report alone without asking you first — except a C1, which gets made safe there and then.