Electrical work needed for an HMO or property licence in London

Electrical work for an HMO or property licence

You're partway through a licence application - or a renewal, or the council's just been round - and the electrical conditions are the bit holding it all up. Maybe the form wants an in-date satisfactory EICR you don't have. Maybe the conditions talk about fuse board requirements, alarm details and appliance records, and nobody's told you what actually applies to your house. We work with HMO landlords right across London - East London terraces split into five lets, South East London conversions - and this exact knot comes up week in, week out.

The good news? It's a process, not a mystery. Start early enough and it's a calm one.

Where the requirement comes from

A few possibilities - and it's worth knowing which one is yours before anything gets booked.

Most often it's simply the licence conditions themselves: councils typically expect a satisfactory EICR that's current, held on file and produced on request, and the demand surfaces at application, at renewal, or after a council inspection. If yours has expired - or never existed - that's the gap.

Sometimes it runs deeper. Shared houses push loads and layouts through an installation that was never designed for them - five tenants cooking, heating and charging where one family used to live. That's how a first proper test ends with an unsatisfactory eicr.

There's also a wrinkle coming for some HMOs: BS 7671 Amendment 2 brings AFDD requirements into play for HMO socket circuits at the next board change. Not a today problem for every property, but it may well shape what your next fuse board has to look like.

None of this is a diagnosis from here - it's what we commonly find sitting behind this situation.

How fast should you act?

Deadline work, not blue-light work. The clock that matters is your application or renewal date - and the trap is starting too close to it.

Here's why timing bites. If the electrical installation condition report comes back marked unsatisfactory, the remedial work generally has to be completed and evidenced within 28 days - or sooner where the report specifies -. Book the test a fortnight before the licence deadline and a failed result leaves you no room at all. Start two or three months out and the same result is just a diary entry.

The stakes for drifting past the line are ugly, too. Operating a licensable HMO without a licence is an offence carrying unlimited fines and rent repayment orders. A missing or failed report breaches the licence conditions and the PRS electrical regulations at the same time - two enforcement routes open at once. And the application itself tends to stall while electrical evidence is outstanding, so the whole licence ends up waiting on the electrics.

Early beats fast on this one. Every time.

What you can get ready yourself

Before anything's booked, three genuinely useful moves.

Read your licence conditions properly. Councils vary in what they ask for beyond the EICR - some want alarm specifications, some want appliance testing evidence, and one borough's list isn't the next one's. The conditions document is the job spec.

Gather what already exists: the last EICR, PAT records, alarm details. Having those ready speeds the application and shows us what's genuinely missing rather than guessing at it.

And think tenancies. If board or wiring work proves necessary, voids and turnover weeks are the cheapest window - empty rooms mean faster access and less disruption.

Two things to avoid: submitting paperwork you can't stand behind, and leaving the testing until the conditions force your hand.

What we look at

Our approach isn't "turn up and test". For licence work it's four steps.

First we audit the property against the licence's electrical conditions - the actual wording your council uses, not a generic checklist. Then the inspection and test itself, to BS 7671, with the HMO-specific requirements in scope from the start rather than bolted on afterwards.

If the report throws up problems, we complete the remedial or upgrade work - including AFDD provision where it's required. Landlords who've been through eicr testing London across a spread of properties will tell you the remedial stage is where a cheap test turns expensive; scoping it honestly first is the difference.

Last step - the one councils actually care about - we assemble the certificate pack in the form your council will accept. Every engineer carries the qualifications their work requires - the paperwork reflects it.

How it's sorted: the electrical safety certificate London councils ask for

The fix maps to what the audit finds. For most landlords it's an eicr certificate scoped to meet the licence conditions. Where the board's the sticking point, it's an upgrade with AFDD/RCBO protection on the HMO circuits. Plenty prefer the full landlord compliance package - EICR, appliance testing and alarms handled together, one renewal diary instead of three. And if a report's already come back unsatisfactory, we price and complete the remedial works from its findings.

Same-day EICR appointments are available when a deadline's genuinely tight - though the certificate follows the inspection, not the phone call.

When to get moving

If your application or renewal lands inside the next three months, the sensible window is now - early enough to absorb a failed report and its 28-day remedial period without the licence stalling. Every week the test waits, that window shrinks; the council's deadline won't move to suit your electrics.