Your landlord is required by law to give you a copy of your electrical inspection report within 28 days of the inspection, not merely offer it or mention that it exists. If you've never seen one, that's already a problem worth knowing about.
The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 require every private landlord to have the electrical installations in their property inspected and tested at least every five years. The resulting report is called an Electrical Installation Condition Report, or EICR. Because the checks run on a five-year cycle, a wave of them fall due for renewal each year, and a lot of landlords quietly fall behind.
What the EICR law requires landlords to do
The regulations set out what landlords must do. The rules are not ambiguous.
A landlord must arrange an electrical inspection by a qualified, competent electrician at least once every five years. The regulations require a competent person rather than membership of any particular scheme, but registration with a recognised body such as NICEIC, NAPIT, or ELECSA is the usual way to evidence that competence. The inspection must test the full electrical installation against BS 7671, the UK wiring regulations standard. If anything is classified as requiring urgent remedial action, the landlord has 28 days to fix it, or sooner if the report specifies a shorter deadline.
Once the EICR is completed, the landlord must give a copy to each existing tenant within 28 days. New tenants must receive it before they move in. Any prospective tenant who asks must receive it within 28 days of the request. The local authority can also request a copy, and the landlord must provide it within 7 days.
One thing landlords get wrong: the five-year clock resets from the date of the new inspection, not from when the previous EICR expired. There is no early renewal window. If an inspection happens six months before the five-year deadline, the next one is due five years from that earlier date, not from when the old one would have run out.
The inspection is the landlord's cost to bear, not yours.
What counts as a landlord electrical safety violation
There are several distinct ways a landlord can breach these regulations, and not all of them are obvious.
No EICR at all. The most common failure. Either the landlord never commissioned an inspection, or the property has an EICR that expired before the current tenancy started and was never renewed.
EICR not provided to the tenant. The landlord has a valid certificate but never handed it over. The obligation to share the document is separate from the obligation to conduct the inspection. Both must be met.
Remedial work not completed within 28 days. The EICR identified a problem, the landlord acknowledged it, and 28 days passed without the work being done and certified. This is its own breach, even if the original inspection was carried out on time.
Unqualified inspector. If the person who carried out the inspection was not a qualified, competent electrician, the resulting certificate does not satisfy the regulations. Registration with a body like NICEIC, NAPIT, or ELECSA is the usual sign of that competence, so its absence is worth questioning. The landlord cannot rely on an inspection by an unqualified person as evidence of compliance.
Each of these failures exposes the landlord to enforcement by the local authority and a fine of up to £40,000. The 2025 amendment regulations raised the ceiling from £30,000 on 1 November 2025.
None of this is a reason to keep quiet about a missing EICR. Section 21 no-fault evictions ended on 1 May 2026, so a landlord who wants you out has to prove a Section 8 ground in court, and your complaint about electrical safety is not one of them. See Section 21 ends on 1 May 2026. What that means for your tenancy.
How to check whether your landlord has met their obligations
Start with the simplest step: ask in writing. Send your landlord a message, by email or text so there's a record, asking them to provide a copy of the current Electrical Installation Condition Report for the property. If they have a valid EICR, they must give it to you within 28 days.
When you receive the report, check three things. First, the date: the EICR must have been issued within the last five years. Second, the outcome code: an EICR rated C1 (danger present) or C2 (potentially dangerous) means remedial work was required. If the landlord hasn't shown you evidence that work was completed and certified, ask for it. Third, the inspector's credentials: their registration with NICEIC, NAPIT, or ELECSA should appear on the certificate.
If the landlord doesn't respond, or tells you they don't have one, or produces a document that looks out of date or unverified, that is evidence of non-compliance. Keep every message.
You can also report a non-compliant landlord to your local council. The council has enforcement powers under these regulations and can issue the landlord a notice requiring them to produce a valid EICR or carry out remedial work. If you want guidance on that process, How to Report a Landlord to the Council UK sets out the steps clearly.
Rent repayment orders are another avenue worth knowing about. If your landlord is in breach of certain housing obligations, you may be entitled to claim back up to two years' rent for an offence committed on or after 1 May 2026, and up to 12 months for an earlier one. Electrical safety certificate failures can be one component of a broader landlord licensing or compliance case. How to Apply for a Rent Repayment Order UK explains who qualifies and how to bring a claim.
What tenants can claim for electrical safety failures
The regulations do not give tenants a direct compensation claim against a landlord for failing to provide an EICR. That is an enforcement matter for the local authority. But electrical safety failures rarely exist in isolation.
If your landlord hasn't complied with electrical safety obligations, there's a reasonable chance they haven't complied with other obligations either: gas safety, deposit protection, HMO licensing, or repair obligations. Each of those carries its own compensation route.
Where electrical defects have caused damage to your belongings or personal injury, you have a claim in negligence and under the landlord's repair obligations in Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Document everything: photographs of damaged appliances, medical records if you were hurt, any written reports you've received. The amount you can claim depends on the loss you've suffered, but these claims are taken seriously by courts.
If your property is an HMO and your landlord hasn't licensed it properly, the electrical safety failure becomes part of a stronger rent repayment order case. An unlicensed HMO can result in you claiming back up to two years' rent at a First-tier Tribunal. Because that offence is committed over a continuous period, regulation 11 of the commencement regulations splits a licence gap running across 1 May 2026, applying the old 12-month rules to the earlier part and the new two-year rules to the months since. Read more at Unlicensed HMO Rent Repayment Order UK Guide.
For properties with persistent disrepair, including unsafe wiring or electrical hazards, the Renters' Rights Act 2025 will extend the Decent Homes Standard to private renters. The government's January 2026 response confirmed that will happen from 2035, so it is not a route you can use today. See Decent Homes Standard: What Tenants Can Claim for what it will cover.
The key is building a documented record before you make any claim. Every written request you've made, every response you received (or didn't), every date that passed without action: these are your evidence.
How Remedy helps tenants with electrical safety and landlord compliance
Remedy is a UK legal technology platform built for renters dealing with exactly these situations. If you're not sure whether your landlord has met their electrical safety certificate obligations, you can share the details of your situation with Remedy and get a free, instant assessment of where you stand. No consultation fee. No jargon.
Remedy's Landlord and Property Assessment checks for a range of compliance failures including gas safety certificate compliance, deposit protection status, and other landlord violations that often appear alongside electrical safety failures. If your situation has multiple issues, Remedy identifies them all and tells you what each one is worth.
For tenants who want to put formal pressure on their landlord, Remedy's AI-drafted letters reference the applicable legislation by name, so your landlord knows you're not guessing. A well-drafted letter to a landlord who knows they're non-compliant often produces results faster than you'd expect.
If the situation escalates and you need to file with a council, an ombudsman, or a tribunal, Remedy's Council and Ombudsman Filing Support takes you through the process step by step. For tribunal cases, Remedy helps you build your evidence bundle, track deadlines, and prepare your case.
Remedy operates on a no-win-no-fee model. The free tier gives you a detailed situation assessment with no credit card required. The paid platform tier costs £40 as a one-time payment and includes letter templates, tribunal filing support, court bundle generation, document storage, and deadline tracking. If you want an expert involved, the no-win-no-fee tier starts at 10% of winnings and includes a 30-minute consultation plus expert review throughout your claim.
You can also reach Remedy on WhatsApp.
What landlords must do after a failed EICR
An EICR can come back with three types of observations: C1 means danger present and immediate action is required, C2 means potentially dangerous, and C3 means improvement recommended. A C3 on its own does not require the landlord to take action, though they should consider it. C1 and C2 both require the landlord to carry out remedial work.
From the date of the inspection, the landlord has 28 days to complete and certify the remedial work, unless the report specifies a shorter timeframe. After the work is done, the electrician must issue a written confirmation that the installation has been made safe. The landlord must then send that confirmation to each tenant, and to the local authority if requested.
The confirmation document is not optional. A landlord who says "I got it fixed" but cannot produce the certification has not met the legal requirement. Push for the paperwork.
If the landlord does nothing after a C1 or C2 finding, you are living in a property the landlord's own inspection flagged as dangerous. That creates real liability for them, and you have both enforcement routes through the council and disrepair routes through the courts available to you.
Given the pressure on EICR renewals and longer wait times for qualified inspectors, landlords who leave booking to the last minute create compliance failures through simple poor planning. That doesn't reduce their liability. If the certificate expired on the 1st of the month and the next inspection is booked for the 15th, they are non-compliant for those 14 days.
If you've never seen an Electrical Installation Condition Report for your property, ask for one today in writing. Your landlord has 28 days to provide it. If they can't, or won't, that's a compliance failure you can act on.
Upload your tenancy agreement to Remedy or share your situation via WhatsApp and Remedy will run a free Landlord and Property Assessment that checks for electrical safety compliance alongside every other obligation your landlord has. If there are violations, Remedy tells you what they're worth and what to do next.
