Do you still pay for an EICR if it fails?

It is a common assumption that you only pay if an EICR passes — but the fee covers the work of inspecting, not the outcome. Here is how it works and what a fail really costs.

Why you pay either way

An EICR is a service, not a product with a guarantee. You are paying a qualified electrician to spend time inspecting and testing your installation and to produce a formal report on its condition, and that work is the same regardless of how the report turns out. The electrician carries out the same sequence of visual inspection and dead and live testing — checking earthing and bonding, measuring insulation resistance, confirming polarity, verifying that protective devices operate — whether the installation is in fine shape or riddled with faults. In fact, an installation with problems often takes longer to assess and document, because every observation has to be recorded, coded and explained.

So a "fail" is simply the report doing its job: identifying problems you need to know about. There is no industry practice of refunding the fee for an unsatisfactory result, any more than a vehicle MOT is free because the car fails its test — in both cases you are paying for the expert assessment, not for a particular verdict. Looked at the right way, an unsatisfactory EICR is arguably the more valuable result of the two, because it has surfaced a genuine safety issue that you can now put right, rather than leaving it hidden until it causes harm.

It also helps to remember what you are actually buying. The fee secures a qualified, impartial assessment of an installation you cannot easily judge yourself, recorded in a document that carries weight with insurers, buyers, local authorities and future electricians. That value is the same whether the verdict is satisfactory or unsatisfactory — arguably greater on a fail, because the report has done the harder work of finding and describing real faults. A satisfactory report tells you the installation is sound; an unsatisfactory one tells you precisely what is wrong and what to fix, which is information you would otherwise have no way of obtaining. Neither outcome is a wasted spend, and treating the fee as the price of knowing, rather than the price of a particular verdict, is the accurate way to think about it.

What an unsatisfactory result costs

The total cost of a fail is the inspection fee plus the remedial work. The inspection is the same £100–£300 range you would have paid for a satisfactory result, because, as above, the fee is for the assessment rather than the outcome. The remedial cost is where a fail differs, and it depends entirely on what is wrong — anywhere from a small repair such as re-terminating a connection or replacing a damaged accessory, through a consumer unit replacement, to a partial or full rewire in the most serious cases. The report's codes are the guide to which end of that range you are at.

Because the electrician cannot price remedials until they know the specific faults, that quote arrives after the report rather than as part of the inspection fee. This is the same impartial split that applies to every EICR: the inspection assesses the installation on its merits, and the remedial work is then quoted as a separate, itemised step. You are also generally free to take the remedial work to a different registered electrician if you prefer, provided they carry it out competently and certify it correctly — getting a second quote is especially worthwhile for a larger job, and it does not affect the validity of the original report.

General UK guidance. Sources: Electrical Safety First; trade cost guides.

Is a re-test charged again?

After remedial work, the installation usually needs confirming as satisfactory so that you have a document showing the faults have been put right. Where the same electrician carries out the repairs, they may issue a Minor Works Certificate or an Electrical Installation Certificate for the work done, or update the report, rather than charging for a whole fresh EICR — the appropriate certificate depends on the scale of the remedial work. For a contained fix this confirmation is often folded into the remedial job rather than billed as a separate inspection.

If a separate, full re-inspection is needed — for example where the remedial work was extensive, or where a different electrician carries it out — there may be a further fee for issuing a new report. The sensible step is to ask up front whether the re-test or confirmation is included in the remedial quote, so you know the full picture before agreeing the work. For landlords, this confirmation matters beyond cost: the Electrical Safety Standards 2020 require written evidence that the remedial work has made the installation satisfactory, supplied within the timescale the report sets, so the confirming certificate is part of meeting the legal duty, not an optional extra.

What a fail means for landlords specifically

For an owner-occupier, an unsatisfactory EICR is a strong recommendation to act, but the timing is largely a matter of safety and judgement. For a landlord in England, it is firmer than that: an unsatisfactory result triggers a legal duty to have the remedial work carried out, and to obtain written confirmation that the installation is now satisfactory, generally within 28 days of the inspection — or sooner if the report specifies a shorter period for a particular fault. The cost of the inspection is payable whatever the outcome, exactly as it would be for any tenant or owner, and the remedial cost then follows.

The practical takeaway for landlords is to budget for the EICR as a known periodic cost and to treat a possible unsatisfactory result as a foreseeable, not exceptional, outcome — particularly in older properties. Knowing that a fail does not waste the inspection fee, and that the remedial work is a separate and itemised cost with a clear deadline, makes the whole process easier to plan for. The report you pay for either way is also the evidence that protects your position: it shows the installation was inspected on time, records exactly what was found, and, once the remedial confirmation is added, demonstrates that the duty has been fully discharged.

There is one timing nuance worth holding in mind. Because the inspection fee is payable on the day regardless of result, and the remedial cost only becomes clear afterwards, a fail effectively splits the outlay into two stages rather than one. For a landlord working to the 28-day remedial window, that means the second, larger cost can land close behind the first, so it is sensible to keep a contingency in the budget for older properties where an unsatisfactory result is more likely. None of this changes the basic position — you pay for the inspection either way, and the remedial work is a separate, itemised cost — but planning for both stages up front turns a possible fail from an unwelcome surprise into a foreseeable, manageable expense.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & further reading

• Electrical Safety First — your questions answered
• Checkatrade — electrical safety check cost

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.