Home/Advice/Electronics Testing Services for West Sussex Homes Explained
Advice · West Sussex & West Sussex
Type "electronics testing" into a search engine and you get everything from lab equipment to phone repair shops. For a homeowner or landlord in West Sussex, it almost always means one of a handful of electrical safety checks carried out by a registered electrician. This guide explains what each one is, when you need it and roughly what to expect on cost and time.
Most people searching for this are really after one of three things: portable appliance testing (PAT) for plug-in items, an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) for the fixed wiring, or fault finding when something keeps tripping. They are quite different jobs, and the paperwork you receive at the end is different too.
PAT testing covers anything with a plug: kettles, lamps, extension leads, washing machines. An EICR covers the parts of the house that do not move, such as the consumer unit, circuits, sockets and light fittings. Fault finding is diagnostic work, where an electrician traces a nuisance trip, a warm socket or a flickering circuit to its cause.
Private landlords in England must have a valid EICR before a tenancy starts and renew it at least every five years. In practice, plenty of Worthing, Chichester and Horsham lets are on older wiring, so a five-year cycle is sensible rather than a formality. Owner-occupiers are not legally required to have an EICR, but one every ten years, or whenever you buy a property, is the usual recommendation.
PAT testing is not a legal requirement for a family home. It matters for holiday lets, HMOs, home businesses and anywhere an insurer or letting agent asks for it. If you run a small workshop from a garage in a rural spot near Petworth or Midhurst, your insurer may well want appliance records. For a normal household, a visual check of leads and plugs every few months is usually enough.
Expect the power to be off for chunks of the visit. A three-bedroom house typically takes two to four hours. The electrician will inspect the consumer unit, test earthing and bonding, check insulation resistance on each circuit, confirm RCDs trip within the required time and take a sample of sockets apart. Older properties around Bognor Regis and Littlehampton often show up missing supplementary bonding in bathrooms or rubber-insulated cable from the 1950s and 1960s, both of which get coded.
The report itself lists observations with a code. C1 means danger present and is dealt with on the day. C2 means potentially dangerous and makes the report unsatisfactory until fixed. C3 is improvement recommended and does not fail the report. FI means further investigation is needed. A good electrician will walk you through each item rather than just handing over a PDF.
Prices depend on the size of the property, the age of the installation and how many circuits there are. For a one or two bedroom flat, an EICR in the county usually falls somewhere between £120 and £180. A three or four bedroom house is more often £180 to £300. Anything unusually large, or with outbuildings and a separate supply, is priced on inspection.
PAT testing is normally charged per item with a minimum call-out, often around £1 to £2 per item once you are past 20 or so items, with a floor of £60 to £90 for the visit. Fault finding is usually billed hourly, commonly £50 to £80 for the first hour, with a clear estimate before any remedial work starts. Be wary of very cheap EICR offers online: some are priced on the assumption that remedial work will follow, and the inspection itself gets rushed.
Clear access to the consumer unit, the meter cupboard and a few sockets in each room before the electrician arrives. Unplug computers and anything with a sensitive power supply, and note down anything that has been misbehaving, such as a breaker that trips when the shower runs. That detail saves diagnostic time and money.
Keep the report. Insurers, solicitors during a sale and letting agents will all ask for it, and a dated history of tests makes any later fault much quicker to trace.
Published 7 September 2026
Landlords must renew every five years or at change of tenancy if the report recommends it. For owner-occupiers the usual guidance is ten years, or sooner if the property is older or has been altered.
Not necessarily. A single C2, such as a missing RCD on a socket circuit, makes the report unsatisfactory, but many are straightforward to put right in an hour or two. C1 items are the ones that need immediate action.
You can carry out basic visual checks on leads and plugs yourself. Formal testing with a PAT machine and a written register needs someone competent with the equipment, which for insurance purposes normally means a qualified electrician.
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