PAT Testing in London
PAT Testing Company London — Labelled Appliances, Full Register, Clear Pricing Upfront
Insurer's asking for certificates. Agent won't market the flat without records. Or you've taken on a building and the previous owner left no paperwork at all. We cover PAT testing London offices and let flats are asked for — across East London, North London and South East London — with pricing agreed before anyone starts.
- Portable appliance testing for landlords
- Same-day appointments available
- Every appliance labelled and logged
- Full appliance register supplied
Serving London, East London, North London, South East London, South West London and surrounding areas.
PAT Testing — at a glance
- Areas covered
- London, East London, North London, South East London
- Common work
- IET Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing, PAT Appliance Register, Formal Visual Inspection, Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
- Same-day appointments
- Same-day appointments are available for all our services
- Quote before work
- Yes — a clear written quote after inspection
The insurer's renewal letter asks for current electrical certificates, the last lot of paperwork predates the tenant before this one, and nobody can say when the fixed wiring was checked - that's when the office fixed-wire testing lands on somebody's to-do list, and we test the installation and every appliance running off it while we're there, because one duty sits behind both. Portable appliance testing is the half people forget: kettles, fridges, heaters, the extension leads under every desk, each item labelled and logged so the PAT testing London agents and insurers ask about becomes a PAT test certificate and register you can hand over rather than a promise you have to make. If you're weighing up the whole compliance picture, our London electrical safety services sit around this same job. Sorting it before the renewal date always costs less than sorting it after.
Quick answer
PAT testing checks the appliances you supply - kettles, fridges, heaters, extension leads - for damaged flexes, wrong fuses and failed earthing, the faults that build up quietly between tenancies. We inspect each item, test it, label it and log it on a register you can show an agent or an insurer. Worth booking alongside your next inspection, before somebody asks for it.
PAT Testing London: Flats, Offices and Everything Between
PAT testing around London stretches across jobs that look nothing like each other - a one-bed flat with three supplied appliances, a shop with a back room full of extension leads, office PAT testing where every desk has its own kit. None of it is one standard job, which is why PAT testing London quotes should follow a proper count rather than precede one.
What matters to you isn't the testing itself, it's what you're left holding afterwards. Every appliance gets an identification number, a pass or fail, and a next-test recommendation, and all of it lands on a PAT appliance register - one document, every item, ready for a letting agent, an insurer, or the council when they ask. Lose that register and you're not just repeating the work; you're unable to show anything at all about the years in between. That's the point of portable appliance testing at all.
The tests behind it are unglamorous and they matter. An earth continuity test checks the earth path from the plug pin through to the metal casing is genuinely intact - the protection that stops a faulty appliance putting voltage somewhere a hand goes. And that path breaks quietly. Flexes get yanked, plugs get trodden on, cheap adaptors get daisy-chained behind a bed by a tenant who's short of sockets.
Nobody discovers an appliance failed its earth check the hard way and then decides the paperwork was the expensive part.
Book electrical testing for your building
020 7123 9361PAT Testing in London, Done to the Code
PAT testing right around London tends to start with the same question turning over in someone's head: do I have to do this at all, and how often? Honest answer - it depends, and the thing that decides it is the IET Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing. That's the code governing PAT, and it threw out the old assumption that every item gets tested once a year. In its place sits a risk-based test interval built from what the appliance is, how hard it's used and where it lives. A plug-in heater in a let flat with tenant turnover isn't carrying the same risk as a desktop printer that hasn't moved in four years, and treating them the same just costs you money.
The work itself comes in two stages. A formal visual inspection goes first - flex, plug, fuse rating, casing, any sign of overheating - and it catches most defects before an instrument leaves the case. Combined inspection and testing is the fuller procedure, adding earth continuity, insulation and functional tests at the intervals the risk assessment sets. Each result is logged against that appliance's entry in the register, with a next-test date recommended, and the instrument readings are what stand behind it.
Why any of it exists: the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989. Testing your appliances is how you evidence that duty to maintain equipment, and the duty holder - whoever genuinely controls the premises - is the one who commissions it and keeps the register as proof. Most PAT testing London landlords book covers a handful of supplied items. Commercial premises, shops and serviced offices are the same principle at a different scale.
What you get is simple enough. We walk the property, count what's really there, and give you a written quote, itemised, before testing starts. Then a labelled set of appliances, the register, and a plain explanation of anything that failed. Where an owner or agent wants EICR, PAT and alarm records handled together, the landlord electrical package pulls them into one visit.
Wait until an insurer, agent or council officer asks, and you're paying for urgency on top of the work.
How London PAT Testing Works, Step by Step
Every PAT testing London job opens the same way - we agree what's in scope before anything gets unplugged. That means counting appliances, actually counting them, because a flat with a fridge, a washer and a microwave and a small shop with forty items on one ring are different pieces of work. The count is what the written quote comes from, so there's no surprise arriving at the end.
Then the formal visual inspection. This is the documented check of the appliance, its flex, its plug and its fuse, done without instruments, and it's where the majority of defects show up: stretched or nicked flexes, cracked plug tops, scorch marks round the pins, a 13A fuse sitting in something that should be carrying 3A, cable pulled clean out of the cord grip. Extension leads and IEC leads get exactly the same attention - they're the most abused items in any office and the ones most often skipped by a cheap job.
Instruments come out after that. Earth continuity on every Class I item, then the insulation resistance test, which confirms the insulation between the live parts and the earthed casing is still doing its job. That's the test that finds moisture ingress, heat damage and the slow degradation you'd never spot from the outside. Where the equipment makes that test unsuitable, a leakage measurement takes its place instead. The PAT tester logs each result against the appliance's register entry, and the label goes on as we go.
Fails get explained properly - what it is, whether it's a new flex or a scrap-it, what we'd do in your position - and you decide. We won't bin a tenant's kettle without asking, and we won't quietly wave something through because failing it would be awkward.
Our engineers are qualified to the standards the work requires, and the line's answered 24/7 if it suits you to sort the booking at nine at night. Testing itself is a booked appointment.
Get the visit in the diary while it's still your choice rather than somebody's deadline.
A London Portable Appliance Testing Service for Commercial Premises
The most common reason this page gets opened at all: a business premises is due fixed-wire testing, or an insurer has asked for certificates and nobody can find any. People put it plainly - "fixed wire testing for office", "insurance wants electrical test certificate", "commercial EICR needed" - and it's usually one of three things sitting behind it. It may be the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 duty to maintain electrical systems so far as reasonably practicable, which in practice tends to be evidenced by periodic testing on a three-to-five year cycle. It may be an insurer or a landlord wanting current certificates in hand before a renewal or a lease event. Or it may simply be that no records survived the previous occupier or the last testing cycle - far more common than anyone likes to admit. PAT testing London businesses need sits right alongside that, because everything plugged into that installation falls under the same duty.
Here's the part that catches people out. There's no fixed legal test interval for appliances. Nothing in any regulation says test everything every twelve months, whatever a salesman told you when he quoted for an annual round.
That surprises landlords who've been sold yearly testing as a legal requirement, and it worries the ones who hear "no interval" and assume it means no duty. Both readings are wrong. The obligation is to maintain equipment so it doesn't cause danger; the interval is yours to set from the appliance, its environment and how hard it's worked, and the register is where you show your working. A laptop charger in a quiet office and a vacuum dragged round a communal stairwell are nowhere near the same clock.
The practical trouble with leaving it? When the insurer, the agent or the council finally does ask, they ask for documents, not intentions. Producing records that start three years ago is a very different conversation from producing nothing and promising to arrange something. And if nobody's looked at the appliances in that time, whatever's wrong with them has had all of it to get worse. A frayed flex on a heater doesn't heal itself.
Do the count once, set the interval once, and after that you're only keeping it current.
Discuss an EICR programme for your block or portfolio
020 7123 9361PAT Testing Near Me, Across London's Rented Stock
Landlord-supplied appliances are the whole job in most rented flats, and what counts as "supplied" is wider than people assume: the fridge-freezer and washing machine you left in, the microwave a previous tenant abandoned that you never took out, the vacuum in the cupboard, the plug-in heater you dropped round when the heating sulked. If it's yours and it plugs in, maintaining it is on you. That's the whole of PAT testing London for a let flat - every supplied item found, tested, labelled and written down.
In the Victorian and Edwardian conversions across inner and East London the pattern barely changes: part-updated wiring, too few sockets per room, and tenants filling the gap with extension leads and four-way adaptors run behind a bed. Those leads are appliances in their own right, and they fail more often than anything else on the round.
Post-war and ex-council purpose-built blocks, thick on the ground through South East London, throw up something different. Plenty are still on original consumer units with no RCD protection, so the earthing on an older supplied appliance is carrying more of the safety burden than it should. That's where a broken earth path stops being a theory.
Small commercial units and offices in Central London are a volume problem - more items, more people who own those items, and a register that goes out of date the moment somebody brings a kettle in from home.
HMO landlords get the sharpest version of it, since the Management of HMOs Regulations 2006 put appliance and installation safety squarely on the manager, and the compliance pack a council or agent asks for expects records, not reassurance.
A register you started last month is worth far more than one you meant to start last year.
Still Comparing PAT Testing Quotes?
Fair enough - that's the sensible way round it. Tell us what's in the property or the premises, we'll count the items properly rather than guess at them, and you'll have a clear written quote before a single appliance is tested. Book your portable appliance testing on that basis, with labels on every item, the register, and any failure spelled out plainly.
PAT Testers London: The Questions We Get Asked
Does my office or shop need periodic electrical testing?
The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 put a duty on you to keep the electrical system in a condition that won't put anyone in danger, and in practice that gets evidenced by fixed-wire testing every three to five years - shorter where the environment is harder on an installation, like commercial kitchens or workshops. Insurers commonly want to see it at renewal. If your last certificate is older than you'd care to admit, that gap is the bit that ends up costing.
Do I actually need PAT testing, and how often?
There's no single law ordering an annual PAT round. What there is instead is the duty to keep equipment maintained, and testing is how you show you've met it. Frequency comes from the appliance type, the setting around it and how much punishment it takes. Insurers, agents and councils then ask for it as evidence, which is why guessing at the interval is a false economy.
Can I just check the plugs and flexes myself?
You should, honestly - user checks are meant to be part of it. A plug, fuse and flex check picks up a lot: a cracked plug top, browning around the pins, a flex nicked where a door shuts on it, the wrong fuse rating. But a user check isn't a record. It won't test earth continuity or insulation, and it produces nothing a council officer or an insurer will accept as proof.
How long does it take and how disruptive is it?
It's driven by item count, not property size. Each appliance is out of use for a minute or two, so in a shop or office we work round trading hours and start where you need the space back first.
What do I actually end up with?
Any PAT testing London booking ends with paperwork you can actually use: every appliance labelled with its result and next-test date, a register listing the lot, and anything that failed explained in language you can repeat to a tenant. Where the fixed wiring is due at the same time, EICR certificates are usually worth doing on the same visit rather than paying twice for someone to turn up.
Every month this drifts is a month you can't evidence - and that's invariably the month somebody asks.