Electrical Installation Condition Report – is No Joke!

With the April 1st EICR deadline now arrived – are you compliant?

It is compulsory for an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR), valid for 5 years, to have been completed by 1 April 2021 for all existing specified tenancies. An EICR report has also been a legal requirement ahead of the start date for most new residential tenancies since 1 July 2020.

This has been a challenging time for landlords and lettings agents alike. Ensuring that all properties have up to date EICRs, has been difficult to manage during Covid-19 lock-downs. For instance, in addition to demand for compliance with the regulation, there has been a generally higher demand for various contracting work than usual. Consequently, electricians have been extremely hard to book for the report to be undertaken.

Non-compliance could result in a landlord facing fines of up to £30,000 and their insurance becoming invalidated. Banning orders may also be brought for serious or repeated offences.

Ensuring that there is a paper trail of communication between tenants, agents, landlords and electricians will safeguard agents or landlords against any enforcement activity where work could not be carried out during lockdown measures. Some tenants have not wanted contractors to undertake the work due to social distancing. Therefore, a landlord and/or letting agent should have a record of all communications in order to ensure every effort was made to contact the tenant.

With Rentancy you can keep all of your communications in one place. Traditionally, tenants and agents or landlords would communicate via a mixture of phone, e-mail, etc. With a Rentancy account, you can communicate via an internal instant messaging service. If you are a lettings agent, you can include landlords in communications or simply give them viewing rights so that they are also informed of any important topics such as the status of having a compliant EICR. All messages are stored under each property so you can swiftly refer to any messages when needed.

Find out more about the communication and problem-reporting functions by visiting Rentancy.com