What is fixed wire testing (EICR)?
Fixed wire testing is the periodic inspection and testing of a building's fixed electrical installation, producing an Electrical Installation Condition Report that records its condition and any defects found.
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</figure>The report classifies observations by severity, distinguishing danger present, potentially dangerous, and improvement recommended. Those codes are the actionable part, and the difference between them determines what has to happen immediately.
A satisfactory report is a statement about a date. Installations change as circuits are added and equipment is replaced, and alterations between inspections are not covered by the previous report.
Intervals are set by reference to the type of installation and its use, informed by the previous report's recommendation, rather than by a single universal period.
In practice
A report with coded observations and a satisfactory overall result.
The front page is filed as evidence of compliance. Inside are observations with codes that indicate remedial work, some of it urgent.
The certificate records a condition rather than conferring one, and the observations are the part that tells you what to do next.
Tracking certificates for expiry and never for content is the commonest shape of this failure.
What goes wrong in practice
- Remedial codes on a report never actioned, leaving a compliant test and a non-compliant installation.
- Testing done in phases across a building with no view of which parts are currently covered.
- Alterations made between inspections with no record, so the report no longer describes the installation.
- An unsatisfactory report filed alongside satisfactory ones with no flag.