- In Wales, altering a circuit in a kitchen, a bathroom or outdoors is notifiable. England took kitchens and outdoor work off that list in 2013. We did not.
- Notifiable work is either self-certified by a registered electrician — you get a building regulations compliance certificate within 30 days — or notified to building control in advance.
- Landlords in Wales need an EICR every five years, and it must reach the contract-holder within 14 days.
- Every storey of a rented home needs a mains-powered, interlinked smoke alarm, and any room with a gas, oil or solid fuel appliance needs a CO alarm.
- Miss the paperwork and the home can be judged unfit for human habitation even though the wiring is fine.
Most electrical advice online is written for England. On this subject the two countries genuinely diverged in 2013, and a second divergence arrived in 2022 for anyone letting a property. If you are working from an English guide in Cardiff or Caerphilly, you are working from the wrong list.
The rule English guides get wrong
The Welsh Government's own guidance on electrics says you do not need to tell building control about repairs, replacements and maintenance, or about extra power points, lighting points and other alterations to existing circuits — except in a kitchen or bathroom, or outdoors.
Those three exceptions are the whole story. In England they were removed on 6 April 2013, so an electrician in Bristol can add a kitchen socket to an existing circuit and notify nobody. Do the same job in Cardiff and it is notifiable work.
What “notifiable” actually means for you
It does not mean an inspector on your doorstep. There are two routes, and the first is the one you want:
- A registered electrician self-certifies. An electrician registered with a competent person scheme does the work, notifies it, and you receive a building regulations compliance certificate within 30 days. No council fee, no waiting.
- You notify building control yourself. If the person doing the work is not registered, the notification has to be made to the local authority in advance, a fee is paid, and the work is inspected. That is the expensive route, and it is the one people discover after the event.
The certificate is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is what a buyer's solicitor, an insurer or a letting agent asks for years later, and it is far easier to hand over than to reconstruct.
The three certificates, and which job produces which
Landlords in Wales: the duties England does not impose
Since 1 December 2022 the Renting Homes (Wales) Act has folded electrical safety into fitness for human habitation. That framing matters: these are not standalone certificates you can be late with, they are conditions of the home being lawfully lettable at all.
The Welsh Government's guidance for landlords sets out three duties:
The 14 days that catch people out
Having the inspection done is only half of it. The guidance is specific about getting the report into the contract-holder's hands:
- Where the EICR already exists before someone moves in, it must be made available within 14 days of the occupation date.
- Where the inspection happens after they have moved in, the report must be provided within 14 days of the inspection date.
- Written confirmation of any investigatory or remedial work follows the same 14-day pattern.
This is not a technicality. The National Residential Landlords Association reports a High Court ruling that failing to serve the EICR inside that window can render a property unfit for human habitation even where the inspection itself was satisfactory — with rent consequences attached. The wiring can be perfect and the paperwork can still fail you.
What an EICR actually tells you
An EICR grades what it finds, and the codes are worth knowing before you read one:
- C1 — danger present. Immediate risk. It gets made safe on the spot.
- C2 — potentially dangerous. Needs remedial work; the report is unsatisfactory until it is done.
- C3 — improvement recommended. Not a failure, and a report with C3s only is still satisfactory.
- FI — further investigation required. Something could not be resolved on the day.
A report is unsatisfactory if it contains any C1, C2 or FI. Plenty of perfectly good installations come back with a handful of C3s and nothing else, which is why a scare-quote from someone selling a rewire deserves a second opinion. If a full rewire genuinely is the answer, our rewiring page and the cost guide set out what that involves.
What we do
We test, we issue the report the same week, and we tell you plainly which items are C1 and C2 — the ones that have to be fixed — and which are C3 recommendations you can plan for. Notifiable work is self-certified through our registration, so the compliance certificate reaches you rather than becoming your problem to chase.