There is a trade in worthless EICRs, and landlords are the target. Some are outright forgeries. More often they are real documents produced by someone who was not competent to produce them, or who did not do the testing they claim to have done.
Either way the outcome is the same. You are holding a piece of paper you think protects you, the council will not accept it, your insurer may query it, and the electrics have not actually been checked. If a fire happens, that report is worse than having nothing, because you relied on it.
Here is how to tell whether yours is sound.
The warning signs
| Red flag | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| No schedule of test results, just a summary page | Without recorded readings, no testing is evidenced |
| No named inspector or registration number | You cannot verify who did it or whether they were competent |
| Inspection took under an hour on a family home | There is not time to test every circuit properly |
| No circuit schedule listing what was tested | The installation has not been documented |
| Everything blank or marked “LIM” throughout | Limitations used to avoid doing the work |
| No observations at all on an older property | Unlikely, and suggests a tick box exercise |
| Priced far below everyone else | The inspection is a loss leader for the remedial quote |
| Sent from a personal email with no company details | Hard to trace, common with resold templates |
| Dates that do not match when anyone attended | Straightforward falsification |
Any one of those is worth a question. Two or three together and you should assume the report is not reliable.
What a genuine EICR contains
A real report is not a certificate with a tick. It is a multi page document, and it should have all of the following.
Details of the client, the property and the installation. The purpose of the report and the date of the inspection. The extent of the installation covered, and any agreed limitations, which should be specific rather than blanket. A schedule of inspections, which is the list of visual checks with each one marked. A schedule of test results, which is the circuit by circuit table of actual readings including continuity, insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance and RCD trip times. Observations, each with a classification code of C1, C2, C3 or FI. An overall assessment of satisfactory or unsatisfactory. And the name, signature, company and registration number of the person who carried it out.
The schedule of test results is the part fakes usually get wrong, because inventing plausible readings for every circuit is more effort than the forgery is worth. If that table is missing, thin, or has suspiciously identical values down the column, that is your answer.
How to verify it in ten minutes
Check the registration. Every legitimate contractor doing this work will be registered with a body like NAPIT or NICEIC. Both run public online searches. Put the company or registration number in and see whether they exist, and whether their registration was current on the date of the inspection. If the report names a scheme the contractor is not actually on, that is the end of it.
Ring the company on a number you found yourself. Not the number on the report. Look them up independently and ask them to confirm they issued a report for your address on that date. A forger will have used a real firm’s name and details.
Look at the readings. You do not need to be an electrician. Are there actual numbers against each circuit, and do they vary between circuits as you would expect? A column of identical figures is a fabrication.
Check the time on site against the scope. If your tenant says someone was there twenty minutes and the report covers fourteen circuits, those two things cannot both be true.
Look at the limitations. Genuine reports sometimes note that a particular area was inaccessible. A report where almost everything is recorded as a limitation has not inspected the installation, it has just written down why it did not.
Why cheap and fake overlap
Not every cheap EICR is fake, but the pressures point the same way. A proper inspection on a three bed house is three or four hours of skilled work. If someone is charging sixty pounds, they either are not doing the hours or they are making the money elsewhere.
The elsewhere is usually the remedials. The pattern is a bargain inspection, a report loaded with C2 codes, and a quote for the repairs that is well above the market. Because C2 items have to be fixed for the report to become satisfactory, the landlord feels cornered.
If you get a report with a long list of C2s and a big quote, get a second opinion before agreeing to anything. A genuine electrician will happily explain why each item is coded as it is. Being unable or unwilling to justify a code is telling.
What to do if you think yours is not genuine
Stop relying on it. Do not send it to the council or a tenant as evidence, because passing on a report you have reason to doubt puts you in a worse position.
Get a fresh inspection from a contractor you have verified independently. Yes it is paying twice, and it is cheaper than a penalty or a fire.
Report it. If the report claims a scheme registration, tell that scheme, because they investigate misuse of their name and members. NAPIT and NICEIC both have routes for this. If it is a straightforward forgery, it is fraud, and Trading Standards will take an interest.
Keep everything. The report, the invoice, the emails, what your tenant remembers about the visit. If you are ever challenged on why you had no valid EICR, being able to show you were deceived and acted as soon as you realised matters.
The cost of getting this wrong
The maximum penalty for breaching the electrical safety rules in rented property rose to £40,000 in November 2025, up from £30,000, and it applies per breach. An invalid EICR is treated as no EICR.
Then there is insurance. Cover is unlikely to be voided for the report alone, but a claim involving an electrical fire will be examined, and a report from someone who was never competent to issue it will not support you.
Booking with confidence
When you book us you can check our NAPIT registration before we turn up, you get a fixed price agreed in advance, and you get the full report with the complete schedule of test results, not a summary page. We work with landlords and letting agents across Liverpool and Merseyside, and you can see what the inspection covers on our electrical inspection and testing page.
Common questions
Is an EICR valid if the electrician is not registered with NAPIT or NICEIC?
Registration itself is not what the law demands, competence is. But scheme registration is how competence is normally demonstrated and how councils and insurers assess it. Someone with no registration and no verifiable qualifications is going to struggle to satisfy anyone that the report is sound.
Can I check an EICR online with a central register?
There is no single national database of EICRs. You verify the contractor through their scheme rather than looking up the report itself, and then confirm with the contractor directly that they issued it.
My agent supplied the EICR. Am I still liable?
Yes. The duty sits with the landlord. If your agent arranged a report that turns out to be worthless, you carry the compliance failure and take it up with them separately. It is worth asking agents who they use and checking that contractor yourself.
The report has no test results but says satisfactory. Is that acceptable?
No. Without a schedule of test results there is no evidence the installation was tested. Treat it as invalid and get it redone.
How long should an EICR document be?
For a typical house, several pages. A single page is not an EICR, whatever it is titled.