Landlords Guide to Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment

Firstly it is important to point out there is no legal requirement for landlords to inspect and test electrical equipment. However landlords do have an obligation that anything they supply to tenants is safe and the surest way of achieving this is through inspection and testing.

Since we wrote the last article on this topic here there have been two significant developments. In March 2011, the government asked Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, Director of the King’s Centre for Risk Management at King’s College London, to conduct an independent review of health and safety regulations to identify opportunities to simplify the rules. On 28th November 2011the Löfstedt report was published, here highlighting a significant level of legislative over-compliance by industry. One key issue identified in the report was confusion over PAT testing – widely misunderstood as a requirement to carry out inspection and testing annually, regardless of equipment type, usage or environment. Inspecting or testing annually has never been a requirement, and a new Code of Practice was published to emphasise and expand on this. In November 2012 the IET published the 4th edition of the Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment.

The 4th edition has been written to emphasise the need to ‘risk assess’ the requirement for any inspections and tests. Risk assessments are vital to understanding what can affect any electrical equipment in use, and to be sure of its continued safe use.

The dutyholder (landlord) is responsible for ensuring a risk assessment is carried out for electrical equipment they provide to tenants. The dutyholder can appoint a competent person or persons to undertake the risk assessment and take day-to-day responsibility for controlling any identified risk, known as the ‘responsible person’.

In the past PAT testing has, in the majority of cases, been conducted by external contractors. These contractors have then, quite wrongly, set the frequency of the subsequent inspections and tests without consultation or input from the dutyholder, and without an adequate – if any – risk assessment.

The risk influencing factors are:
• The environment
• The users
• The equipment construction
• The type of equipment
• The frequency of use
• Type of installation methods
• Previous records

In many cases, table 7.1 in the Code of Practice was used or misinterpreted as a definitive frequency chart which is not correct. Table 7.1 is only intended to provide guidance on initial frequencies, and should only be used as a starting point where previous inspection and testing records and risk assessments are not available. Ongoing frequencies should be determined from a risk assessment.

Below are some common examples of Class I electrical equipment provided in rental property and the frequency of checks, inspection and testing:

• It is normally not necessary to test new items of equipment as the manufacturer has already tested them.

A copy of the original table 7.1 can be found here