The extension is finished, the sockets are where you wanted them and the builder has been paid. If no Electrical Installation Certificate arrived and the work was never notified under Part P, you have a problem that will not show up for years — until you sell.
When you market the property you complete the Law Society's TA6 Property Information Form. It asks, under penalty of misrepresentation, whether electrical work has been carried out since 2005 and requires the compliance certificates for it.
What should have happened
Notifiable electrical work should be carried out by an electrician registered with a competent person scheme such as NICEIC or NAPIT, who then self-certifies the work and notifies the local authority. You receive an Electrical Installation Certificate and a Building Regulations compliance notification.
If the contractor used someone unregistered, or the registered electrician simply never notified it, neither document exists and there is no record on the register for a solicitor to find.
Why indemnity insurance is no longer the easy answer
The traditional fix was an indemnity policy. Buyers' solicitors increasingly reject them, and the reasoning is hard to argue with: the policy protects against local authority enforcement action. It does not tell anybody whether the wiring is safe. A buyer is not worried about the council; they are worried about the wiring.
The alternative is regularisation — applying to local authority building control, who require an approved electrician to inspect and test the installation. On work that has been finished and decorated, that can mean cutting into new plaster and lifting new flooring to expose cable runs and connections. It is expensive, disruptive, and a common reason sales fall through.
- Ask for the EIC and the scheme notification, by name, before the final payment
- Check the electrician's registration number against the scheme's own register
- Keep the certificate with the build file, not loose in an email thread
- If work was done years ago with nothing on file, deal with it before marketing
Where we fit — and where we do not
We are not electricians and we are not registered with any competent person scheme. We cannot test an installation, we cannot issue an EIC and we will never tell you an installation is safe — only a qualified electrician can do that, and if there is any doubt, that is who you need.
What we do is make sure the question gets asked at the right time. For homeowners running their own project we set out which certificates are due from which trade and at what point, so the paperwork is a condition of payment rather than an afterthought. For work already complete, we go through what you hold, identify what is missing and set out the realistic options before a buyer's solicitor sets them out for you.
Control means holding the last payment
The single most effective thing a homeowner can do is straightforward: the final payment is released when the certificates arrive. Good contractors have no issue with this because they were always going to produce them. It only becomes a fight where the documents were never going to exist, which is precisely when you want to find out.
This piece is drawn from reputable published sources — GOV.UK guidance on Part P and the building regulations, the competent person schemes and standard conveyancing practice — but it has not been individually verified line by line, which is why no company, individual or specific case is named in it. Requirements also change over time. Treat it as a general explainer and confirm the current position with a registered electrician, your building control body or your solicitor before you act on it.
Sources and further reading
This article draws on reputable published sources and public enforcement reporting. It has not been fully verified case by case, so no individuals, companies or addresses are identified.
This article is general guidance, not advice about your particular site or premises. If you want it applied to your own job, the first call is free.