As of today, landlords in England are required to have every electrical installation within their private rented property inspected and tested by a qualified and competent electrical inspector at least every five years – and any faults found rectified by a suitable competent electrical installer. This applies to new tenancies from July 1 2020, and existing tenancies from April 1 2021.
The National Association of Professional Inspectors and Testers (NAPIT) has taken the lead in providing detailed guidance on the new electrical safety standards in the private rented sector (England) regulations 2020 to both landlords and our members in advance of the regulations coming into force to allow people to get prepared. NAPIT is also supporting landlord associations, letting agents and local authorities in their understanding of the new regulations during this period of adjustment through webinars, articles and by responding directly to queries.
As well as the free detailed guidance available on the website and NAPIT’s newly published book: ‘Landlords and Electrical Inspectors Guidance for the Private Rented Sector (PRS) Electrical Safety Checks,’ NAPIT has updated the search function on its website to not only show registered companies competent to undertake electrical inspection or installation work, but also to show their registered operatives.
This will provide greater confidence to those who wish to verify the competence of the individual undertaking electrical work on their property. The new listing will show the operative details including their name, scope of approval and photo ID for verification purposes.
NAPIT’s Chief Operating Officer, David Cowburn comments, “I’m delighted that we have taken this crucial step to update our online search facility to include the details of the competent operatives within each of our registered electrical businesses. This change has been made to provide greater confidence to consumers and better align with the Minimum Competency Requirements which require us to ‘ensure that there is a record of each competent individual capable of completing self-certification and the limits of their competence.’ Now more than ever consumers and landlords alike can be assured that the NAPIT tradesperson they are hiring to carry out the works is up to standard.”
The individual search facility is in place for all NAPIT Electrical Schemes where operatives are listed.