New EICR to cover any changes made by outgoing tenant?

So a regular inspection would be more effective as it may fall mid term of a tenancy, and can reveal any dangerous wiring alterations a tenant may have carried out, otherwise if a new report is taken on or before a new tenancy starts, then that report can be valid for 5 years and the new tenant may have carried out dangerous electrical work and it would not otherwise come to landlords attention. So why not make it as a quick regular inspection each year using visual and plug in testers and an extensive one every 5 years.

Or perhaps it should be carried out 1 year into any new tenancy, so that any illegal work a tenant carried out not meeting electrical safety standards can be revealed,

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 13/05/2021 - 13:06
The landlord, or his appointed agent is the responsible person. Your points are very valid, and this is why more frequent checks are better. The responsible person needs to ascertain what frequency is best, as only the responsible person has this knowledge. So when it comes to finger pointing, the finger always points to the responsible person. This is where 3 monthly checks are important, to spot anything of concern.
I guess your chosen frequency would depend on your tenant type.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 13/05/2021 - 13:22
Landlord already does a visual inspection upon change of tenancy.
Point that's being made here is the only publication by Govt during the lead-up to these regulations were that Landlords ( and only Private ones at that -
like my mockery of Social and Council tenants not being affected by dangerous electrics ! ) were required to have an EICR every 5 years.

Nowhere prior to this debate has there been any mention of ' upon change of occupancy, which seems to be a semantic inclusion from various sources as mentioned 'ad nauseam' above.

Probably worth a recap on the legislation.
Duties of private landlords in relation to electrical installations
3.—(1) A private landlord(7) who grants or intends to grant a specified tenancy must—
(a)ensure that the electrical safety standards are met during any period when the residential premises(8) are occupied under a specified tenancy;
If a previous tenant made a change that you did not spot, and a new tenant then electrocutes themselves, you would be liable.
The frequency then comes down to your appetite for risk. If you feel reasonably competent, and diligent, 5 years is probably fine. But if you are less confident, change of occupancy might be a better idea.
But ultimately, as the responsible person, it's up to you.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 13/05/2021 - 13:22
Alongside the recommended frequency for full inspection and testing - "change of occupancy/5 years" - BS7671 states that a routine check should be done annually.

I think it is time that we use technology available to us, fit smart digital devices in each socket and lights and switches that monitor the state of every bit of wiring, including earths, polarity, insulation breakdown, leakage, etc, such that an early warning is raised to an occupant, this will negate the need to carry out regular inspections, If an earth disconnection is detected it can turn that circuit off, may I will start designing these smart devices, at a touch of a button on your smart phone you could down load the entire ECIR report for free, whenever you want, if aa problem is detected that is the only time you will need to hire an electrician and get him to do just that part of the wiring, these smart devices should not cost too much to be integrated within sockets, switches and lights, what is not possible these days? the only thing that is beyond man is landing on the Sun.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 13/05/2021 - 20:48
You can design a smart device which will not only test every item of a property's electrical system but also automatically repeal any legislation which in your view has been rendered redundant by that device? Really? Wow!

yes Old Mrs Landlord, we once used canaries in coal mines and then someone came up with a wonderful device called carbon monoxide detector, and the canaries were freed to fly once more,
But today you can get these devices using digital processing that they can alert you well before a major incident, can send you remotely parts per million level of carbon Monoxide and you can set your own alert levels all send to you on your smart phone. So if you start getting very high levels of CO, you could set an automatic command to shut down your boiler, and send a text message to your Corgi Registered gas safe chap to go and investigate the problem, or you can manually shut it down too, isn't technology so wonderful, so we should make all these inspections redundant. we could also integrate gas analysers within boilers checking products of combustion making yearly gas safe certification redundant, and throw that legislation out of the window, wouldn't life be so reassuring and more comfortable knowing you will never get fobbed off again.

Well actually we won't be using gas in 20 years from now.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 14/05/2021 - 10:22
Vokera boilers now come with CO sensors, and can test flue gases, so engineer now takes readings off screen, rather than using his flue analyser.
Vokera also have a landlord setting, so after 12 months it turns off. This way tenants have to let you test to get it turned back on.

Yes Michealwgroves, though the readings may be near enough as one has to use a calibrated instrument, however it is good for an early warning of things potentially developing serious issues,
As for automatically shutting off just because a period of 12 months is approaching this could land a landlord in serious breach of housing law, as all tenanted properties must be adequately provided with heating and hot water at all times except when boil may have actually broken down completely. And then a landlord is duty bound to get it fixed in shortest possible time, or provide alternative means of heating and hot water if main boiler breaks down. System boilers with storage heaters can heat water by an immersion electric element heater and temporary electric fan heaters provided by a landlord for heating, perhaps also paying towards higher electric bills.