Most housing providers already know the dates. The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) (Amendment) (Extension to the Social Rented Sector) Regulations 2025 came into force on 1 November 2025, applied to social tenancies granted from 1 December 2025, and reach existing tenancies on 1 May 2026. For those existing tenancies, both the electrical installation inspection and the check of any electrical equipment the landlord provides must be completed before 1 November 2026.
What fewer providers have scoped properly is the second half of that sentence. The EICR programme has an owner, a contractor framework and a five-year cycle in most organisations. The equipment duty is new, it sits between asset management and repairs, and nobody has a register for it. This piece is about that side of the work: which items actually count, how long a door really takes, and how to phase the programme across a stock so you are not chasing 300 no-access properties in October.
Which items fall on the equipment side of the line
The regulations define electrical equipment as those electrical fixtures, fittings and appliances that are not electrical installations. In practice the dividing line is the one used in the IET Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment: anything permanently connected to the fixed wiring belongs to the installation and is covered by the EICR, and anything that connects by plug and flex is equipment.
So the electric shower, the hardwired hob and oven on a 32A cooker circuit, the ceiling luminaires and the hardwired extract fan are inspected as part of the EICR. They are not your equipment register. What lands on the equipment register is the plug-connected, landlord-supplied stock, and across a mixed social housing portfolio that typically means:
Freestanding cookers fitted on a 13A plug rather than a cooker outlet plate. Fridges and fridge freezers in furnished general needs lets, temporary accommodation and dispersed accommodation. Washing machines and tumble dryers where these are supplied, which is common in extra care and sheltered schemes and rare in general needs. Microwaves in sheltered flats. Plug-in panel heaters and oil-filled radiators supplied as a heating solution or as temporary heating that was never collected. Plug-connected boilers and unvented cylinder controls, where a fused plug top has been used. Warden call and door entry handsets with a plug-top power supply. Bath lifts, hoist chargers, riser recliners and mobility scooter chargers in adapted properties. And the items that appear in schemes rather than in individual homes: communal laundry equipment, lounge televisions, kettles and water boilers in scheme kitchens, cleaners' vacuums, caretakers' power tools and grounds maintenance equipment.
Two registers, not one, is the sensible structure. Register one is the in-dwelling equipment supplied under the tenancy, which is what the 2025 regulations bite on. Register two is the communal and staff equipment in schemes, offices and stores, which has been caught by the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 for decades because those areas are a workplace for your staff and contractors. Register two is usually smaller and easier, and it is the one an inspector or auditor can see without an appointment.
What the record has to do
The equipment check produces a record with the same disclosure pattern as the EICR: a copy to the existing tenant, a copy to a new tenant before they take occupation, and a copy to the local housing authority if it asks. Where the record shows equipment is not safe for continued use, remedial work or replacement must follow as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event within 28 days.
That 28-day clause is the one that changes your programme planning. A failed 18-year-old cooker in a sheltered flat is not a repair, it is a procurement decision with a lead time. If your programme finishes on 30 October 2026 you have no room to act on anything it finds. Enforcement sits with local housing authorities and financial penalties run to £40,000, and where access is refused the regulations recognise evidence that the landlord took all reasonable steps. Both of those facts point the same way: start early, document everything, and treat the tail end of the programme as contingency rather than capacity.
Realistic time per door
The planning mistake is costing the job in items rather than in visits. Item counts in social housing are low. A typical unfurnished general needs house in Chesterfield or Bolsover may have nothing at all on the equipment register, or a single plug-in cooker. A furnished temporary accommodation unit might have four to six items. A sheltered flat with landlord-supplied white goods runs six to ten. Extra care with mobility and assistive equipment can reach a dozen.
The time is in the door, not the item. Once a tester is inside a property with two to four items, the testing itself is 10 to 15 minutes: visual inspection is the bulk of the work, with earth continuity and insulation resistance on class I items, plus a functional check. Some items need judgement rather than a default test sequence. Washing machines and older cookers with heating elements and EMC filters can show low insulation resistance without being unsafe, so a protective conductor current measurement is the appropriate route. Freezers should not be pulled out and left off while you work through a schedule, which means sequencing them last and testing in place.
Add five to ten minutes per door for identifying assets, labelling and recording, then add the real overhead: travel between doors and no access. Sequential flats in the same block, with a tenant liaison officer knocking ahead of the tester, support 12 to 16 doors a day. Scattered rural stock across the High Peak, Derbyshire Dales and the Peak District villages drops that to six to eight. First-visit no-access rates of 20 to 40 per cent are normal on any social housing safety programme, and each missed door needs two or three further attempts, so budget for around 1.4 visits per completed door.
Worked example. A provider with 1,200 doors, of which 800 have at least one item of landlord-supplied equipment at an average of three items each, has roughly 2,400 items to check. At 12 completed doors a day, that is around 67 productive tester days, plus recall visits, which realistically means 85 to 95 days of resource. Spread from March to mid-September 2026 that is one tester most weeks. Left until August it is four testers and no room for failures.
Phasing the programme across the stock
Work backwards from the deadline, not forwards from today. Allow 28 days for remedials and replacements plus time to issue records, and your operational completion date is mid-September 2026, not 31 October.
First, build the inventory before you build the schedule. Void standards, lettings inventories, adaptation records and scheme asset lists will tell you where landlord-supplied equipment exists. Where the data is missing, plan for the first visit to capture it: a tester who arrives with a blank sheet is still productive, but a tester who arrives expecting one item and finds nine will break the day's schedule.
Second, decide whether the equipment check rides along with the EICR visit. One access event serving two duties is a large saving on tenant liaison, and the 1 November 2026 date applies to both. The competencies differ: the installation inspection needs a qualified electrician working to BS 7671, while the equipment check needs demonstrable competence in in-service inspection and testing. Some contractors cover both in one visit. If yours does not, decide deliberately whether to accept two visits or to align the two programmes so they land in the same week.
Third, sequence by risk and access difficulty rather than by patch. Front-load extra care and sheltered schemes, temporary accommodation, properties with adaptations and assistive equipment, and any property with no electrical record on file at all. These have the highest item counts, the most vulnerable tenants and the highest likelihood of generating remedial work you will want time to fund. Leave the low-item general needs stock for the middle of the programme, and keep the final six weeks clear for the persistent no-access cases.
Fourth, attach the equipment check to an appointment the tenant already expects. Gas safety anniversary visits, communal fire door inspections and planned works visits all give you a slot and a reason for contact. Where you do have to chase, keep the audit trail: dated letters, texts, call logs and door-knock records are what evidences reasonable steps if a property cannot be accessed by the deadline.
Fifth, hold the data in something you own. One register keyed to the property reference or UPRN, with item description, make, model, asset label, result, test date, tester and next due date, exportable as a spreadsheet or CSV. A folder of PDF certificates is not a compliance system and will not survive a change of contractor or a Regulator of Social Housing information request.
Where checks turn into a replacement budget
Expect the programme to surface a replacement list rather than a repair list. Old white goods fail on damaged flexes and glands, cracked plug tops, missing earth continuity at the appliance body, seized or bypassed door interlocks and, on cookers, heat-damaged terminations. On appliances of 15 years and older, replacement is often cheaper than a compliant repair, and the 28-day clock does not care which you choose. Getting the survey done in the spring means procurement can bundle replacements rather than buying them singly in a rush.
Doing this in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire
We run in-service inspection and testing across Derbyshire, the Peak District and South Yorkshire from our Chesterfield base, and cover York and North Yorkshire from the second branch. For programme work we price by visit length rather than per item, because per-item pricing punishes you for the scattered low-count doors and rewards nobody: up to an hour from £50, half-day from £125 and full-day from £250. A full day in a single block or scheme clears a large number of doors. Sheltered and extra care schemes tend to overlap with the way we handle care settings, where communal equipment and assistive equipment sit alongside the in-dwelling items.
If you manage a mixed portfolio that includes market rent or intermediate rent units, those fall under the private rented sector duties instead, and our notes on landlord equipment testing cover that side. The practical advice for the social stock is the same either way: count the doors, not the items, fix your operational completion date in September, and start with the schemes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the deadline for social housing electrical equipment checks?
For social tenancies that already existed, both the electrical installation inspection and the check of any landlord-supplied electrical equipment must be completed before 1 November 2026. The Extension to the Social Rented Sector Regulations 2025 came into force on 1 November 2025 and applied to tenancies granted from 1 December 2025, reaching existing tenancies on 1 May 2026. Because failed items must be put right within 28 days, a sensible operational completion date is mid-September 2026 rather than the end of October.
Which items count as electrical equipment rather than part of the EICR?
The dividing line is how the item is connected: anything permanently connected to the fixed wiring belongs to the installation and is covered by the EICR, while anything connecting by plug and flex is equipment. So electric showers, hardwired hobs and ovens, ceiling luminaires and hardwired extract fans sit with the EICR. Plug-connected landlord-supplied stock goes on the equipment register, typically freestanding cookers on a 13A plug, fridges and freezers in furnished lets, washing machines in extra care and sheltered schemes, microwaves, plug-in panel heaters, warden call handsets, bath lifts and hoist chargers.
How many properties can one tester cover in a day on a social housing programme?
Sequential flats in the same block, with a tenant liaison officer knocking ahead of the tester, support around 12 to 16 doors a day. Scattered rural stock across the High Peak, Derbyshire Dales and Peak District villages drops that to six to eight. Item counts in social housing are low, so the time is in the door and the travel rather than the testing, which takes 10 to 15 minutes for a property with two to four items. Budget around 1.4 visits per completed door, because first-visit no-access rates of 20 to 40 per cent are normal.
What happens if equipment fails the check?
Where the record shows equipment is not safe for continued use, remedial work or replacement must follow as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event within 28 days. In practice most programmes surface a replacement list rather than a repair list, because on appliances of 15 years and older replacement is often cheaper than a compliant repair. That is why surveying in spring matters: procurement can bundle replacements instead of buying single units against a 28-day clock.
What are the penalties, and what if a tenant will not give access?
Enforcement sits with local housing authorities and financial penalties run to £40,000. Where access is refused, the regulations recognise evidence that the landlord took all reasonable steps, so the audit trail matters: dated letters, texts, call logs and door-knock records. Keeping the final six weeks of the programme clear for persistent no-access cases gives you the attempts and the evidence you need.