The short answer
In England and Wales there is no law that bans a competent person from doing their own electrical work, including a rewire, but a rewire is notifiable work under Part P of the Building Regulations and must comply with BS 7671 and be certified and signed off. A registered electrician can self-certify through a competent person scheme; a DIYer cannot, so you must notify Building Control before starting and arrange inspection and testing, usually paying for a registered electrician to verify and sign off the work. Because a rewire requires specialist testing equipment and knowledge, and unsafe work is dangerous and unlawful if uncertified, most people use a registered electrician.
The short answer is "legally possible but rarely practical". The sections below set out what Part P requires, where the line is, and why certification is the real obstacle for DIY.
DIY rewire essentials
- Outright banned?No, but heavily regulated
- Rewire isNotifiable under Part P
- Must meetBS 7671 18th Edition
- DIY self-certify?No
- Sign-offBuilding Control / electrician
What Part P actually requires
Part P of the Building Regulations covers electrical safety in dwellings in England and Wales. It does not ban DIY electrical work, but it makes certain work notifiable — meaning Building Control must be informed and the work inspected and certified. A full or partial rewire is notifiable, as are new circuits and work in special locations like bathrooms and kitchens.
All electrical work, notifiable or not, must comply with BS 7671 (the 18th Edition wiring regulations). Notifiable work has two legitimate routes:
- Registered electrician: a member of a competent person scheme (such as NICEIC or NAPIT) can carry out and self-certify the work, registering it and issuing the certificate without separate Building Control involvement.
- DIY or non-registered: you must notify Building Control before you start, and the work is inspected and tested — usually by a registered electrician acting for, or accepted by, Building Control — before it can be signed off.
Why certification is the real obstacle
The legal headline — that DIY is allowed — hides the practical difficulty: a rewire has to be tested and certified to prove it is safe, and that is hard to do without the right equipment and competence.
Certifying an installation requires measuring insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance, RCD operation, polarity and continuity using calibrated test instruments, and recording the results on an Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC). A person who is not competent to design, install, inspect and test to BS 7671 cannot reliably produce a compliant installation or sign it off.
If you do the wiring yourself, you will typically still need to pay a registered electrician or Building Control to inspect, test and certify it. If the work fails testing, it has to be put right — so the saving over hiring an electrician from the outset is often smaller than it looks, with more risk attached.
There is also a practical sequencing trap in the DIY route. An electrician asked to test and certify someone else's installation is putting their own name and registration behind it, so they will only sign off work they can verify is compliant — which in practice means being able to inspect connections, cable routes and terminations that may already be buried behind fresh plaster by the time they are called in. If they cannot see the work, or it does not meet BS 7671, they are entitled to refuse to certify it, and you are left having to open up finished walls or redo runs. Many electricians are reluctant to take on the liability of certifying unseen third-party wiring at all. That is the quiet reason the "do it yourself, get it signed off later" plan so often unravels: the certification is not a formality bolted on at the end, but something that has to be designed into the job from the first cable.
The consequences of uncertified work
Skipping notification and certification is not a victimless shortcut. Uncertified notifiable work can cause real problems:
- Selling the home: a buyer's solicitor commonly asks for certificates for electrical work. Missing paperwork can stall a sale or force a regularisation application and remedial work.
- Building Regulations enforcement: non-compliant work can lead to enforcement action requiring it to be corrected.
- Insurance: unsafe or uncertified electrical work could affect a claim after a fire.
- Safety: most importantly, faulty wiring is a genuine fire and shock risk to the household.
For these reasons, even where DIY is legal, a rewire is one of the jobs where a registered electrician — who can design, install, test and self-certify in one process — is the route most people take. An EICR can also be commissioned afterwards to confirm the condition of any work, though it is not a substitute for the EIC that should accompany a rewire.
It is worth being precise about the difference between those two documents, because it trips people up. The EIC is the birth certificate for new work: it is issued by whoever designed, installed and tested the rewire, and it certifies that the new installation complies with BS 7671. An EICR, by contrast, is a periodic health-check on an existing installation, carried out by an inspector who had no hand in building it. Commissioning an EICR after a DIY rewire can tell you whether what you have built tests safely, but it does not retrospectively supply the EIC that a rewire is supposed to have, nor does it satisfy the Part P notification that should have happened before the work began. The orderly route — design, install, test and certify with an EIC, notified through a competent person scheme — is the one that leaves you with the paperwork a buyer, insurer or Building Control will actually ask for.
Where DIY does and does not make sense
None of this means a homeowner can never pick up a screwdriver. It is worth distinguishing the work that is realistically within reach of a competent DIYer from the work that genuinely needs a registered electrician.
Tasks often handled by a capable homeowner include:
- Like-for-like accessory replacement — swapping a socket faceplate or light switch for an equivalent, which is generally non-notifiable.
- Replacing a light fitting on an existing point.
- The non-electrical preparation around a job — lifting floorboards, clearing rooms, or making good decoration after the certified work is signed off.
Work that should be left to a registered electrician includes:
- A full or partial rewire, which is notifiable and must be designed, installed, tested and certified to BS 7671.
- New circuits and consumer unit changes, which require testing and certification.
- Any work in special locations such as bathrooms, which is notifiable.
A pragmatic approach on a rewire is to agree with the electrician what preparatory, non-electrical work you can do yourself to reduce labour — clearing and protecting rooms, for instance — while the wiring, testing and certification stay with the professional. That keeps the installation compliant and certified while still letting you contribute. The line to remember is simple: doing the wiring is the easy part to attempt and the hard part to prove safe, and it is the proving — the testing and certification to BS 7671 — that makes a registered electrician the sensible choice for the rewire itself.
Frequently asked questions
Is it illegal to do your own electrical work in the UK?
Not outright. In England and Wales a competent person may do their own work, but a rewire is notifiable under Part P and must comply with BS 7671 and be certified. You cannot self-certify unless you are registered with a competent person scheme, so you must notify Building Control.
Can I certify my own rewire?
Only if you are a member of a competent person scheme such as NICEIC or NAPIT. A DIYer cannot self-certify. You would need Building Control involvement and, in practice, a registered electrician to inspect, test and sign off the installation against BS 7671.
What happens if I rewire without notifying Building Control?
Uncertified notifiable work can stall a future sale, trigger Building Regulations enforcement requiring correction, and affect insurance. Most importantly, untested wiring may be unsafe. You can apply for regularisation, but it is far simpler to notify and certify from the start.
Sources & further reading
Figures on this page are typical UK ranges drawn from published sources and depend on your specific property. They are guidance, not a quotation. Legal duties are summarised for guidance — confirm the current position on GOV.UK.