I rent out my mother’s house and it’s maintained through a letting agency. The CICR certificate is now due and I’ve been told that it has failed as the consumer unit is plastic and doesn’t comply with the building regulations. It’s working fine so given that it was installed before the changes to the building regulations, do I have to replace it? My own house has a plastic consumer unit installed in 2016 and I wouldn’t expect to replace this until it fails so shouldn’t expect to have to replace the one in the rental property. Any advice would be appreciated.
Has it been classed as a c1 or c2 or c3 fault
C3 is just a recommendation
C1 and c2 are mandatory
I have been able to keep them in some houses but not in others
In houses that are hmos I was told to change to a metal one and arc the fuse for the sockets
I was advised to change to metal because they were located by the front door
As it’s an emergency exit the hmo inspector wanted a 30 minute window
You get that with metal not with plastic.
They need to be steel. If you want to wait until it fails before replacing it then what you mean is that you want to wait until it goes on fire, because that’s the reason they went from being plastic to steel.
A plastic consumer unit does not need changing solely on the fact it is plastic. It will not be compliant with latest regs but retrospective upgrade is not required, it must have faults to warrant a C1 or a C2 (fail).
Will differ for HMOs as A_A has said.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.