Should EICR (Electrical Instalation Condition Report) be stored nationally or locally in a digital format in a similar way to an EPC (Energy Performance Certificate)?

Should EICR (Electrical Instalation Condition Report) be stored nationally or locally in a digital format in a similar way to an EPC (Energy Performance Certificate)?

This would allow for people and companies to look up the information rather than it being hidden away.  Knowledable people could then have a chance to look at the results or at the previous results to make comparisons and have some historical imformation on the site.  Furthermore it would allow for the information to be checked at a later date should the requirement arise.  (Grenfell Tower inquiry is a casing point)  It has come to light that some of the EICR may not be wholly accurate. 

Parents
  • I am currently making software for eicrs. It will be available for anybody to use and only registered electricians can access the database for editing. The completed eicrs will be available to everbody but excluding customer details,  electrician details and circuit labels. I am thinking of some way to report bad eicrs but haven't given this too much thought at the moment as it would cost a lot of time to go through reported eicrs.

    I've made it so existing electricians can create a report from another uploaded report too and will also include a way for existing reports( handwritten too) to be added but this may be at further cost of £5-£10 each 

    I'll repost once I've finished, I'm around 90% there 

  • It might be counter productive to have a report quality check in the main path of the software, if all it does is encourage the badgers to learn a set of  'good' answers.
    Assessing if the results are likely to be spoofed or not may be better as a separate optional step.

    You'd probably need it to emulate the sort of review that happens when an eicr gets posted here, which is quite tricky, as there are a lot of 'if- but maybe not if else ' which are computationally hard.

    How do you propose to check the registered electrician part ?

    clearly not all electricians are equal.

    And while it is not quite the same, I do have a flat that my wife and I rent out, bought when she was working nearer London, and the rental agent in  good faith offered the services of his £50 test merchants for the electrics. I declined, and in the interests of fairness got a good friend to mark my homework and raise the paperwork instead, but most landlords would not know any better.

    However, the very real problem does exist that in most cases, there is no appetite for (nor really the danger level to justify) an inspection at a level of quality that will really do much good, given the cost and disruption needed to do it well.

    Mike.

  • Just changing tack back to the matter of insurance and the like. Firstly, how many people have been refused a mortgage because of the presence of a BS3036 consumer unit in the property they propose to buy?

    Secondly, how many people have been refused a home insurance claim because there was no RCD protection fitted to the property' installation?

    I would suspect that both mortgage lenders and insurance companies wouldn't last long if they began to refuse either upon what are seen as 'technicalities'.

    I would suspect that credit worthiness comes in at the top of the list and that any notion of a satisfactory EICR lies a long way down the column of satisfactory criteria for eligibility, that is if one is even mentioned at all.

  • BS3036 consumer unit

    Mortgages and insurance are not refused.

    However if you were to make an insurance claims for lets say fire damage and the the report from the fire service states the fire started on or around the CU, I am sure the insurance company COULD use it as a reason to not pay out in full or reduce the amount they pay out.  The same is also true of car insurance. 

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  • BS3036 consumer unit

    Mortgages and insurance are not refused.

    However if you were to make an insurance claims for lets say fire damage and the the report from the fire service states the fire started on or around the CU, I am sure the insurance company COULD use it as a reason to not pay out in full or reduce the amount they pay out.  The same is also true of car insurance. 

Children
  • So in that case, should the homeowner be expected to rush out and buy a new consumer unit every time the wiring regulations change?

    I would say that such a requirement would be wholly unreasonable.