Social housing electrical contractors: how to choose one for your EICR programme

What do social landlords now have to do about electrical safety?

The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 used to apply only to private landlords. Amending regulations made in 2025 extended them to the social rented sector. The core duties are:

• Have the fixed electrical installation inspected and tested by a qualified and competent person at least every five years, or sooner if the report says so.
• Give a copy of the report to the tenant within 28 days of the inspection, and to a new tenant before they move in.
• Give a copy to the local housing authority within seven days if they ask for it.
• Where the report shows remedial work or further investigation is needed, get it done within 28 days, or sooner if the report says so, and confirm it in writing to the tenant and the authority.

The 2025 changes also bring in checks on electrical equipment the landlord supplies, such as a cooker left in the home. Ask any contractor whether they can do those checks on the same visit. A second visit for appliances doubles your access problem.

What should you ask a contractor before appointing them?

• Which competent person scheme are you registered with? NICEIC Approved Contractor status means the firm's work is assessed on site regularly. Check the NICEIC register yourself, not a logo on a website.
• Who will actually do the inspections? Ask for names and qualifications, and whether inspectors are employed or subcontracted. Subcontracting is not wrong, but you need to know who is in your residents' homes and who signs the report.
• Who checks the reports before they reach you? A second qualified person reviewing reports catches coding mistakes and missing test results.
• What is your capacity in my area? A firm based two hours away can quote low and then struggle to come back for no-access visits and remedials.
• How do you handle a C1 found on the day? C1 means danger is present. The inspector should make it safe there and then, tell the resident and tell you the same day.

What should the reports and data handover look like?

The report is the EICR (electrical installation condition report) set out in BS 7671, the national wiring standard. Each problem found gets a code. Electrical Safety First and NICEIC explain these: C1 is danger present, C2 is potentially dangerous, C3 is improvement recommended, and FI means further investigation is needed. Any C1, C2 or FI makes the report unsatisfactory.

For a programme, the PDF is only part of it. Agree up front:

• File format and naming, so reports match your property references.
• A data export with the date, result, next due date and each observation with its code.
• Photos of every C1, C2 and FI, so your team can see what was found without sending someone out.
• How quickly reports arrive. You have 28 days to get them to the tenant, so the contractor should not use most of that.

How should resident access and no-access visits be run?

A landlord is not in breach if they can show they took all reasonable steps to comply, and the government guidance says to keep a record of access attempts. In practice your contractor usually produces that record, so it needs to be good.

Agree a process before work starts: a booked slot by letter or message, a confirmation call the day before, a calling card left on a failed visit, and a set number of attempts at different times of day before the job comes back to you. Every attempt should be logged with date, time and outcome. Ask to see a sample. A vague note saying "no access" will not help you if a home is later questioned. Ask, too, how they handle vulnerable residents, who may need a call from a known housing officer first or a support worker present.

Should the same contractor inspect and price the remedials?

This is the part most contractors would rather not talk about. A firm that inspects your homes and then quotes for the repairs has a reason to code more things as C2 than the installation deserves. Most inspectors are honest, but the incentive is there and you should plan for it.

A C3 is a recommendation, not a required repair. The 28-day duty covers work the report says is needed, which means C1, C2 and FI. A programme where every home needs remedials, or where old but sound installations are coded C2 just because they would not be fitted that way today, deserves a closer look.

• Have a sample of reports audited by a second qualified person who does not stand to gain from the remedials.
• Keep the right in the contract to send remedials elsewhere, or to price them against a schedule of rates you control.

We would rather you did both. If our coding is right, an audit costs us nothing.

What is a programme price made of?

I will not put figures here, because a fair price depends on your stock. These are the things that change it:

• Number and type of homes. A one-bed flat takes far less time to test than a four-bed house. Communal landlord supplies in blocks are scoped separately.
• How homes are grouped. Homes clustered on one estate in Milton Keynes, Bedford or Northampton can be done in a run. Scattered rural stock costs more in travel time.
• Who runs access. Booking and chasing residents is real work and should be priced as such, or left out if your team books.
• Appliance checks and no-access visits. Whether they are included, and how many repeat attempts.
• Remedials. A schedule of rates for common items, such as replacing a damaged accessory, or quoted per job. Larger work like a consumer unit replacement or a rewire is normally quoted separately after you have seen the report.
• Data and reporting. Any custom export or upload to your system.

A sample of property data, such as addresses, property types and the date of the last report, lets a contractor quote properly rather than guess.

Who can cover Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and London?

We work across all three counties and Greater London from Olney, which puts Milton Keynes, Newport Pagnell, Bedford, Kempston and Northampton within easy reach for repeat visits and remedials. You can read more about how we run social housing programmes and void works. If you have a list of homes that need reports, remedials or no-access visits finishing, send us the details through our quote page or call 01908 464338, and we will tell you plainly what it will involve.

Questions we get asked about this