New rules or regulations for social landlords?

Any C1,C2 or FI observations should lead to an unsatisfactory outcome. Remedial works should then be carried out and appropriate installation certificate issued. If you maintain and repair before the EICR is carried out, there would not be any observations and a satisfactory outcome recorded. 

I add to the observations a list of faults and remedial repairs, a satisfactory report is always produced, as I am the one to do the repairs.
The question was more about if an one has heard of this scheme where C1 and C2 need to be reported to an authority ( not sure who yet)

I don’t know of any imperative to record issues that have been addressed but it seems sensible from the perspective of evaluating the suitability of the installation to deal with the external influences and the appropriateness of the maintenance regime in place.

We are often asked to re-issue our EICRs which have an original unsatisfactory designation to one which reads as satisfactory. The original issues that have been addressed are simply crossed out but remain legible.

I'm not sure about the new rules for social landlords. But for private ones, if the EICR has a C1 or C2, then the landlord has to get it fixed, and get documentary evidence that it's been fixed.  That way, they have the paper trail in case the council asks to see it.

Reg. 3 of The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 applies both to private landlords and registered providers of social housing (s. 122(1A) of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 (as amended) so the same rules apply.

It may be that before the amendment under S. 11 of The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, social landlords were not included under the Regulations, so that would explain the change.

As I read the Regulations, the report is due on conclusion of I&T. It is sent to the tenant and on request, to the local housing authority. If remedial work is undertaken, there must be separate written confirmation that it has been done and a copy sent not only to the tenant, but also with the EICR to the local housing authority, who does not have to request it on this occasion.

In practical terms, if remedial work is done at the same visit, and a satisfactory EICR is issued, nobody will care. However, if you have to go back to do the remedial work, and the premises are occupied in the mean time, it may be wise to give the tenant a written warning of the danger.

To some people this sounds like a chicken and egg scenario.  Why leave the premises after doing an EICR if the outcome is not satisfactory?  For some organisations they will have a team or person who goes round doing the EICR and nothing else.  Their mandate is just to report back.  This then gives another team or 3rd party contractor  a list of required remedial work.  This may sometimes come about when an organisation realises that they need to have 100 EICR done in the next 3 months for example working on the proviso that an electrician can do 2 EICR a day.

Personally I think that if the property be it social of PRS (Private Rental Sector) can be left with a satisfactory EICR by the end of the visit then that would be advisable but this may mean that the engineer can only be scheduled for 1 EICR per day and would need to carry a fair amount of stock on the van.  Which is fine in a lot of towns and cities but starts to become cost prohibitive is places like central London where finding the parking can be time consuming and then the additional cost as apposed to a Electrician with a toolbox/Rucksack of kit.  

As a side note it is worth looking at how many EICR you currently have which have expired there original 5 year validity.  Other points of note are smoke detector expiry dates and a valid Legionnaires' disease cert.

From a long term maintenance perspective across a range of properties, I'd expect that the EICR should record ALL the defects and issues spotted, even if repaired immediately.

For a single instance it may feel reasonable to simply 'tick the box' to indicate that the installation is now in a good condition, but from the perspective of long term quality assurance it is important to be able to monitor the degradations and repair frequencies across the estate being managed.

If the EICR is for an estate of 1 unit then a repair/tick the box might be appropriate, but for multi-unit managed estates `they` should be monitoring failures so the EICR aught to note them. Tuppence spent. 

Chris Pearson said:

It may be that before the amendment under S. 11 of The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, social landlords were not included under the Regulations, so that would explain the change.

Yes, as far as I can recall, Social Housing did not have to even have smoke detectors if they could show they were mitigating the risk in another suitable way. Most of them did, of course, fit the smoke detection. As for the EICRs, yes, it was a case of 'check the electrics when the Tenant moves out', if anything goes wrong in the tenancy, fix it, but no EICRs/PIRs needed.

It has tightened up now, but, unfortunately, from my experience, most of the EICRs produced are of the 'quick look, do a Zs and RCD test and scarper' type of test, which, is quite understandable, as the HA's want the cheapest price, with the smallest inconvenience to their Tenants, so we have the race to the bottom, where the Inspector has to do 4 reports a day on tenanted properties, which is impossible to do properly.

The Legislation has done little to improve electrical safety, there are now the quick visits for the EICRs, but few are taking them seriously, as most people know they are a work of fiction, but the HAs are happy as they have spent less than £100 for each property, and have a bit of paper showing it has been done.