Landlord electrical inspections from July!

Landlords! Does your rental property wiring need to be to 18th Edition standards to comply with legislation for electrical safety in England that comes into force from July 2020 for new tenancies, or April 2021 for existing?

In this long and boring ramble where I happen to repeat myself and cut off Nigel at every opportunity, we look at an installation that was rubber-stamped by a competitor as being UNSATISFACTORY. But is it? Is it really? We’re going to reinspect it and cite our sources for any disagreement we have to the conclusions drawn under what is otherwise a fairly competent and thorough inspection by a bona fide rival inspector that cost the client £192 and left them with a remedial bill somehow amounting to £750 plus VAT.

What do you think? Do you agree with the former inspector or with our differing conclusions? Do pop up in the comments and say why but keep the discussion polite. The usual bad language has already been expunged for the most part for any landlords or letting agents who may be venturing onto this channel not knowing what to expect. There isn’t a black-and-white answer, and we have to manage the expectations of our clients without compromising the safety of the tenants based on the advice and evidence at our disposal.

Besides the HSE notice on page 13 of the Blue Book, for those wanting an actual regulation, refer to page 237 and reg 651.2, note 2: "Existing installations may have been designed and installed to conform to previous editions of BS7671, applicable at the time of their design and erection. This does not necessarily mean that they are unsafe."
Links:

A follow-up video to this:
https://youtu.be/drRTv9yyArs

Government guidance, which rather confusingly says you must comply with 18th Edition… unless you don’t:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector-guidance-for-landlords-tenants-and-local-authorities/guide-for-landlords-electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector

Electrical Safety First (Best Practice Guides):
https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/professional-resources/best-practice-guides/

The Competent Persons Register from The Department for Communities and Local Government have a database of all registered electricians. Note however that there is nothing to differentiate electrical installers from electrical inspectors, so if you find someone on here, check their bona fides for performing inspection work:
https://competentperson.co.uk/

There is also the Registered Competent Persons database where you can look up sparkies accredited through NAPIT and NICEIC to be performing electrical inspections (meaning they have been validated for the right insurance and qualifications). Many installation electricians aren’t, but still offer the service often resulting in a gash report:
http://www.electricalcompetentperson.co.uk/

Speaking of gash reports, here’s one I pulled apart a few weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqNZugQ1kI0&t=1948s
… that video being rather sweary, so here’s a link to a polite blog of the same content:
https://www.dses.co.uk/index.php/personal-blog/215-cowboy-competition-8

NAPIT Codebreakers:
https://amzn.to/3f0yAF6 [affiliate link]

With iCertify, whom I mention in this video, I had some back-and-forth in 2016 when I argued that the ‘Maximum permitted Zs’ column which appears on their Schedule of Test Results and auto-calculates the maximum impedance based on the particulars of the circuit should be so named; it previously being labelled as just ‘Zs’ which at face value you take to be the recorded Zs for the circuit. It took about two weeks for them to concede and re-label the column during which time they sent responses along the lines that nobody else was complaining, the head of NAPIT technical says it’s okay and I can take my business elsewhere if I don’t like it. Well excuse me for trying to offer you a simple way to improve your damn product! That, operational bugs, some horrendous interface headaches and my hatred of touchscreen devices all meant I did take my business elsewhere, and I’ve been with Easycert since. Maybe iCertify has improved; it was a long time ago. I’ll never know as I don’t intend to ever fire the knobby thing up again.

Видео Landlord electrical inspections from July! канала David Savery Electrical Services