As my age (and temper) increases, so my patience and range of services drop off in a curiously inversely proportional manner. Y'know, I started this business with all sorts of enthusiastic strings to my bow, some admittedly having snapped along with my sanity over the years, but the latest facing the immediate axe is my willingness to undertake electrical condition reports for the Private Rented Sector… although as with everything else in this life, conditions apply!
The reason for my dropping support of PRS work is that I find some landlords unwilling or unable to act upon my sage advice. Take an older property I perhaps inspected and tested back in 2020 for example. I might have issued a pass or ‘satisfactory’ report back then, clearing the property for continued use even though the consumer unit was perhaps 16th Edition, plastic and had no RCD protection on lighting.
That’s okay so long as the primary means of shock protection (earthing) is present, if metallic services are bonded, the insulating materials are sound and if RCD additional protection was present and operable on other circuits such as sockets. There are other checks and considerations of course, but I was often able to tick off older installations if everything that should be up to muster was still demonstrably mustard because that meant it still complied with the standards of its time. Sure, the wiring regs had moved on by 2020, but ongoing updates in standards don’t apply retrospectively, and just because the wiring regulations later shifted the goalposts like Trump on tariffs doesn’t mean anything older is immediately and inherently unsafe. My report would contain some “improvement recommended” actions to highlight what was lacking compared to today’s safer standard, but like a vehicle MOT, such advisories are informative and don’t torpedo it passing as being satisfactory for continued use - they serve to place the Duty Holder (landlord) in an informed position of knowing what the deficiencies are so that they can decide on how and when to address them.
Nonetheless, someone living in rented accommodation should enjoy a modern level of safety, so while it’s unreasonable to expect every electrical installation to always be bang up to date, especially with the requirements changing quite often in the wonderful world of the wiring regs, many older installations, especially ones that sport evidence of degradation and ageing, or inversely, lack of any ongoing professional maintenance, would contain a comment caveat on the report clarifying that although it may have received my rubber-stamp this time, it would be my recommendation that before the next inspection was due, work be undertaken to modernise the installation to remove the shopping list of advisories.
Major changes to the wiring regs in recent years include updates in 2015 (domestic consumer units changing from plastic to metal), 2018 (the requirement for RCBOs over split-load boards, Type-A residual current protection and residual current protection on lighting), and 2022 (the provision of surge protection, and in certain buildings, arc fault protection). These changes have all been introduced over the past decade to improve safety, so as the years wear on, each of these major changes, along with various smaller ones, get appended to the list of advisories for any older properties which predated such.
Therefore, it just doesn’t fly here in 2025 when I’m asked to revisit installations I last saw half a decade ago and where no evidence of maintenance has since been performed - the only change being the grease and grime having built up new layers of filth, and everything, including me, being just that little bit older and looking more beaten up.
Sure, maybe these installations do still comply with the standards of their day, but things have moved on a lot further now and if my recommendation from five years ago to any landlord or property owner was to “bring this up to code before my next visit”, then being asked to tick it all off again leaves the tenants living somewhere where the electrical safety is now quite some strides back from today's expectations. If I simply rinse and repeat with the same line to “sort it before next time”, then I’m at risk of being accused of turning a blind eye should there be a shock or fire incident. It would make me look ridiculous to recommend an upgrade in 2020, repeat it yet again in 2025, and probably walk up to face the same goddamned yellowed-plastic, cobweb strewn, obsolete consumer unit once more in 2030 when we’ll be on 19th Edition - if I live that long to see it - by that time ruled by our AI cyborg overlords, flying in our drone taxi's and making monthly micro payments to Hager to keep our fusebox firmware up to date or risk it getting hacked by the fucking North Koreans.
If it looks like an old duck and quacks like an old duck... get the fucking thing upgraded duck!
It's especially annoying to revisit properties where there has been a change of tenancy or of use in the last five years - such as student accommodation back then now housing a family of five. That means the landlord had an opportunity to get the place fixed up after I told them to get the fuck on with it, and they chose not to before shipping new suckers in. While any given landlord may moan about having to spend a few hundred quid for a new CU or a few thousand on a full rewire... well that’s the cost of property ownership mate. Spending precisely fuck-all on maintenance year-on-year shouldn’t result in too much of a shock if a phat quote to make the place less of a shithole eventually slaps anyone rudely across the mush. It’s like running a car – if you spend nothing on servicing and maintenance while ignoring the advisories and dashboard warning lights as they pile up, eventually the fucker's going to fail its MOT and the bill to fix all the things you never attended to over the years might be enough to permanently pucker up your exhaust pipe.
So, anyway, I’ve had enough of it. No more Private Rented Sector stuff with immediate effect. That means no more Electrical Installation Condition Reports (EICRs) for the following:
- Student accommodation
- Privately rented properties
- Houses of Multiple Occupation (HoMO - pfft!)
There are four exceptions that I am still prepared to support. An EICR can be undertaken on any of the above in the following circumstances only:
- The EICR is in preparation for a planned consumer unit change or a wider electrical refurbishment for which David Savery Electrical Services has been appointed to undertake on a vacant property.
- The consumer unit (as a minimum) was installed or upgraded and certified by David Savery Electrical Services at any time in the past (I will have installation records) and the wider wiring installation is no more than forty years old.
- The consumer unit was upgraded by a third party and complies at least with 17th Edition Amendment 3 with certification records available and the wider wiring installation is no more than forty years old.
- The installation was built or wholly rewired from 2016 or later and complies at least with 17th Edition Amendment 3.
If you’re a landlord staring at something that even to you looks old, filthy and/or in any way shonky and you know you’ve not spent a penny on electrical maintenance for some years, your choice is either to blow some beans on finally bringing the place up-to-date for the safety of your tenants, or to hire in a drive-by cowboy who will write you an EICR form the comfort of their van for eighty quid. It’ll be fiction of course, and it won’t get you off the hook in the eyes of the law if your tenants do get electrocuted, but there’s just no point in paying my higher prices for my higher standards as I’ll simply hand you a report with UNSATISFACTORY written on it which will ruin your day... ya doss cheapskate prick.
AFF3