Complete power loss in the property in London

The whole property's gone dead

Every light off, every socket dead, fridge silent - and next door's windows are glowing like nothing's happened. Or maybe the whole street's dark and you can't tell. Total loss of power in one property is a call we take week after week across London, from Victorian terraces in North London to ex-council towers in East London. The first job's always the same: work out whether the problem is your installation or the network's supply.

That distinction decides who you call - and it takes about two minutes to make.

What it might point to

Three broad possibilities, in rough order of likelihood.

Most often, the main switch or RCD has tripped on a fault somewhere inside the installation. Something - an appliance, a damaged cable, water where it shouldn't be - has leaked enough current that the protective device shut the whole lot down. That's it doing its job.

It might instead be supply-side: a network outage, or the DNO's cutout fuse has blown at the intake. Clues point this way when the neighbours are off too, or when a prepay meter's involved. If it's the network, no electrician can fix it - and you shouldn't be paying one to try.

Least common, but real: the main switch itself, the meter, or the tails connecting them has failed. Kit at the intake ages like everything else, and in plenty of London's older buildings it's been working unnoticed for decades.

From your side of the consumer unit these can look identical. Guessing wrong wastes hours without heat - so rule out the cheap explanations first.

Does this count as an emergency?

Once the network's ruled out - yes, and it deserves treating like one.

A property that can't hold its main switch on has a live fault sitting somewhere inside it. And the cost of waiting compounds by the hour: heating's off, the fridge and freezer are warming, alarms are running on whatever battery they've got, and stairlifts and medical equipment stop being conveniences and start being welfare issues. If anyone vulnerable lives there, the clock matters even more.

The one thing that makes it worse? Forcing the switch back on again and again without finding the fault. If a fault tripped the main device, re-energising blind repeats the danger each time - you're feeding power back into whatever caused the problem.

If it's genuinely the whole street: different story, different phone number, and you can stand down.

What's safe to check yourself

Three checks - no tools, no covers off, nothing risky.

Look outside. Are the neighbours dark? Streetlights out? Then it's a network outage - dial 105, which puts you through to your electricity network operator, and save yourself an electrician's bill entirely.

If it's just you: glance at the meter. A prepay meter with no credit produces a very convincing fake power cut. Then check the consumer unit - where's the main switch or RCD sitting? If it's dropped, you can try resetting it once.

If it trips a second time, don't reset it again. A main device that won't stay up is holding itself off a live fault, and forcing it repeatedly is the single most dangerous move on offer. Beyond that one reset - nothing. No fuse-pulling at the cutout, no poking behind the board. The intake gear is the network's property, not yours to open.

Two minutes of checks, then a decision. That's all this stage should take.

What an electrician actually does

Fault-finding on a dead property runs in a sequence, and it's the sequence that gets your power back - not luck.

First: confirm supply is actually present at the intake - cutout, meter, tails - because everything else depends on it. If the supply's dead, it's the network's problem and we'll say so rather than stand around billing you.

If the supply's healthy, the fault's inside. We isolate the final circuits and reintroduce them one by one to find which circuit is holding the main device down. Methodical, not mystical - but doing it safely on a live board is exactly why this isn't a DIY job.

Once found, the faulting circuit gets repaired there and then or safely isolated, so everything else can be re-energised. Lights, heating and the fridge come back even if one circuit has to wait for parts.

Anything left isolated gets priced in writing for the permanent repair before we leave - you'll know what's outstanding, why, and what it'll cost. No mystery, no open tab.

From emergency fix to electrical safety certificate London

Step one is an emergency electrician visit to restore safe power - the emergency service runs 24/7 all year, and this is precisely the situation it exists for. Where the failure sits in the main switchgear or an obsolete board, the lasting fix is replacement: tired rewireable-fuse boards across London's older stock are frequent culprits, and swapping one buys protection the original never offered.

And on rentals, this is usually the moment to get landlord electrical safety squared away while everyone's attention is on the electrics - the eicr testing London rented homes are required to repeat every five years at most, under the 2020 PRS Regulations - so the next fault shows up in your electrical installation condition report before it shows up at 11pm.

If the main switch won't hold, call now

Neighbours on, meter fine, main device dropping every time you reset it? Stop there. That's a live fault asking to be found - and every hour it waits, the food, the heating and anyone vulnerable in the property pay for the delay.