EICR Testing in Cannock

An Electrical Installation Condition Report, or EICR, is a formal inspection and test of the fixed wiring in a property. It covers the consumer unit, the circuits, the sockets, the lighting and the earthing and bonding, and it tells you in writing what condition the installation is actually in.

Ashware Electrical Ltd is NAPIT registered and has been carrying out EICRs across Cannock and Staffordshire since 2015. All testing is to BS 7671, the UK wiring regulations.

Domestic EICRs from £220 + VAT.

Landlords: this is a legal requirement, not a recommendation

Under the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, landlords in England must have the electrical installation in every rented property inspected and tested at least every five years, and at the start of any new tenancy.

The regulations are specific about what happens next, and this is where most landlords come unstuck:

• You must give a copy of the report to your existing tenants within 28 days of the inspection
• You must give a copy to any new tenant before they move in, and to any prospective tenant within 28 days of a request
• You must supply a copy to the local authority within 7 days if they ask for one
• Where the report records a C1, C2 or FI code, the remedial work must be completed within 28 days, or sooner if the report specifies a shorter period
• You must then obtain written confirmation that the work is done and supply that to the tenant and the local authority within 28 days
• You must keep the report until the next inspection is due and give it to whoever carries that out

A local authority can impose a financial penalty of up to £30,000 for a breach. It is one of the few areas of landlord compliance with real teeth behind it.

What the codes actually mean

• C1 — Danger present. Risk of injury. Immediate action required. We will make it safe on the day and tell you straight away.
• C2 — Potentially dangerous. Urgent remedial action required. This is the most common failure code.
• C3 — Improvement recommended. Not a failure. The installation can still be satisfactory with C3 items present, and you are not legally obliged to act on them.
• FI — Further investigation required. Something could not be established during the inspection and needs looking into.

A report is unsatisfactory if it contains any C1, C2 or FI. C3 items alone do not make it unsatisfactory. That distinction matters, because some contractors quote for remedial work on C3 items as though they were failures. We will tell you plainly which is which.

Homeowners

There is no legal duty on an owner-occupier, but the general guidance is an EICR every ten years, or sooner if the property changes hands. It is worth doing if you are buying, if you have just inherited a property, if the consumer unit still has rewireable fuses, or if anything has been added over the years by someone you are not sure about.

If the installation is sound we will tell you that. A clean report is a perfectly good outcome and we would rather give you one than invent work.

What typically fails

Across the older housing stock around Cannock, Walsall, Rugeley and Lichfield the same things come up again and again:

• No RCD protection on circuits that now require it
• Missing or incomplete main protective bonding to gas and water
• Rubber or lead-sheathed cable still in circuit, which becomes brittle with age
• Consumer units added to repeatedly rather than replaced
• Undersized or perished meter tails
• Borrowed neutrals left behind by old lighting alterations
• Kitchen, bathroom and shower circuits altered before current zoning rules

A lot of these are straightforward to put right. A consumer unit replacement, from £750 + VAT, resolves a surprising number of them in one visit.

What it costs and what you get

Domestic EICRs from £220 + VAT. The final figure depends on the size of the property and the number of circuits, and we will confirm it before we start rather than after.

You receive the full report, not a summary: the schedule of inspections, the schedule of test results, every observation with its code, and a clear overall satisfactory or unsatisfactory outcome. If remedial work is needed we price it separately and you are under no obligation to use us for it.

For commercial premises, see our commercial EICR page.

Why we are not the cheapest, and why that matters

You will find EICRs advertised locally at £50 to £80. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and we are not going to match them.

Here is what a proper EICR on an average three-bedroom house actually involves. Every circuit is isolated and tested dead: continuity of protective conductors, continuity of ring final circuits, insulation resistance, polarity. Then the supply goes back on and the live tests are done: earth fault loop impedance on every circuit, prospective fault current, and RCD trip times at multiple test currents. On top of that there is the physical inspection — the consumer unit, the bonding, the accessories, the cabling, the accessible parts of the installation — and then the report itself has to be written up properly, with a schedule of test results for every single circuit.

That is a half day on most properties, plus the write-up. It cannot be done for £60 by anyone who is actually doing it.

So what usually happens at that price is that corners get cut. A visual inspection with a handful of spot checks, recorded as though it were a full test. A sample of circuits tested and the rest of the schedule filled in from assumption. Or a cheap report followed by a long list of remedial work, where the money was never in the test to begin with.

If you are a landlord, that report is the document you would be relying on if something went wrong in your property. It is worth it being real.

We would rather tell you £220 + VAT up front and have you decide, than take the job at a price that only works if we do it badly.

Areas we cover

Cannock and all WS postcodes, WV9, WV10, Stafford and the wider ST area. See Lichfield, Walsall, Stafford, Rugeley and Hednesford and Wolverhampton, or the full service areas page.

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