A tenant rings on a Friday night to say half the sockets have stopped working and there is a smell of burning near the fuse box. How long have you got?
The law is less precise here than most landlords expect. There is no single statute that says “electrical faults must be repaired within X days”. What exists instead is a duty to repair within a reasonable time, and reasonable is judged against how dangerous the problem is. That sounds vague until you break it down, at which point it becomes fairly clear.
The timescales you will be measured against
| Severity | What it looks like | Expected response |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | Burning smell, scorched socket, exposed live wiring, sparking, electric shock, total loss of power | Same day, within 24 hours |
| Urgent | One circuit dead, RCD tripping repeatedly, no lighting to a stairwell, no hot water | 3 to 7 days |
| Routine | A single dead socket in a spare room, a loose faceplate, a failed extractor | 14 to 28 days |
| EICR remedials | Anything coded C1 or C2 on an inspection | 28 days, or sooner if the report says so |
The 28 day figure is the one that is actually written down. Under the electrical safety regulations for rented property, C1 and C2 items from an EICR must be put right within 28 days of the inspection, or within a shorter period if the report specifies one, and you then need written confirmation that the work is done.
Everything else runs on reasonableness, and the more dangerous the fault, the shorter reasonable becomes.
What the law actually says
Three pieces of law do the work here.
Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts you under a duty to keep the installations for the supply of electricity in repair and proper working order. That has been in place for decades and it is the backbone of the obligation.
The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 gives tenants a direct route to court if a property is unfit, and electrical safety is explicitly one of the things that can make it unfit. A tenant does not have to go through the council, they can sue.
The electrical safety regulations then add the specific EICR duties: inspection at least every five years, a copy to tenants, and remedials inside 28 days.
Note what is missing. None of them give you a fixed clock for a general repair. That is deliberate, because a dead socket and an arcing consumer unit are not the same problem.
Where Awaab’s Law comes in
You may have seen Awaab’s Law mentioned with a 24 hour repair rule attached. It is worth being clear on the current position.
Awaab’s Law came into force for social housing in October 2025. It sets fixed deadlines for hazards, with emergency repairs to be addressed within 24 hours. It applies to councils and housing associations.
For private landlords it does not yet directly apply. The Renters’ Rights Act paves the way for those standards to be extended to the private rented sector, and that is the clear direction of travel, but as things stand a private landlord is judged on the reasonableness test rather than on Awaab’s timetable.
The practical advice is not to lean on that distinction. If a tenant reports a dangerous electrical fault and you take a fortnight, the fact that Awaab’s Law technically did not bind you is not going to help much, either with a council or in front of a judge. Treat 24 hours as the standard for anything dangerous.
What counts as an electrical emergency
Some of these are obvious and some get dismissed when they shouldn’t be.
A burning or fishy smell around sockets, switches or the consumer unit means something is overheating, and that is a fire risk right now. Scorch marks or discolouration on a faceplate, the same. Any exposed conductor a person could touch. Sparking or crackling from a socket or switch. A tenant reporting a shock or tingle from a tap, a shower or an appliance, which usually points at an earthing problem. A breaker or RCD that trips the moment you reset it, because it is doing its job and telling you there is a live fault. And total loss of power, particularly where someone is vulnerable, elderly, has a medical device or has young children.
Any of those and you are in same day territory. Make the property safe first, even if the full repair takes longer. Isolating a faulty circuit and getting the rest of the power back is a legitimate first step.
What happens if you take too long
A tenant has several routes, and they are increasingly aware of them.
They can report you to the council’s environmental health team, who can inspect under the housing health and safety rating system and serve an improvement notice. Ignore that and you are looking at enforcement and potentially the council doing the work and billing you.
They can bring a claim under the fitness for habitation legislation for a repair order and compensation.
If the failure is an EICR breach, the council can issue a financial penalty of up to £40,000. That ceiling rose from £30,000 in November 2025 and it applies per breach, so more than one failing on the same property can be charged separately.
There is also the possession angle. With Section 21 no fault evictions gone under the Renters’ Rights Act, possession runs through Section 8 grounds, and a landlord with an outstanding compliance failure and a documented repair complaint is in a considerably weaker position than one with a clean file.
Protecting yourself, practically
The landlords who never have trouble with this tend to do the same handful of things.
They respond the same day even when they cannot fix it the same day, because a logged reply with a booked appointment is what demonstrates reasonableness. They keep a written record of when the report came in, what they did and when the electrician attended. They give tenants a straight route to report faults rather than hoping it comes up at renewal. And they get the EICR done early enough that any 28 day remedials are not colliding with a tenancy start.
The reverse is also true. The cases that go badly are almost always the ones where a tenant reported something twice, got nothing back, and then went to the council.
If you need it sorting quickly
We run a 24 hour call out across Liverpool and Merseyside, and a fair bit of our work is exactly this, getting to a property fast, making it safe, and giving the landlord something in writing to close the loop. We work with a lot of landlords and letting agents on that basis, and our fault finding page explains how we trace the cause rather than guessing at it.
Common questions
Can a tenant withhold rent until an electrical fault is fixed?
Not safely, and we would not advise a tenant to try it. Withholding rent puts them in arrears and gives grounds for possession. There is a narrow route where a tenant pays for repairs themselves and offsets the cost, but it has strict steps and most tenants get it wrong. Better for both sides to get it fixed.
Does the landlord have to rehouse a tenant if the power is off?
There is no automatic duty to provide alternative accommodation. If the property is genuinely uninhabitable and it is going to stay that way for a while, it is worth doing anyway, both because it reduces the risk of a claim and because it is the decent response.
What if the tenant caused the fault?
You still have to make it safe and repair it, because your duty to maintain the installation does not depend on fault. You may be able to recover the cost of damage caused by the tenant afterwards, but that is a separate matter and it does not delay the repair.
How long do I get for C3 items on an EICR?
None, because C3 is a recommendation rather than a fault. It does not stop the report being satisfactory and there is no deadline. Worth doing eventually, not urgent.
The tenant will not give access for the repair. Where does that leave me?
You need to be able to show you took all reasonable steps: written requests, offered dates, and a record of it. The 2025 amendments to the electrical safety regulations recognise this and give some protection to landlords who genuinely cannot get in. Keep everything in writing.