Landlord duties
Who pays for an EICR in a London leasehold flat?
There is no rule that the leaseholder always pays, that the freeholder always pays, or that the landlord always pays. Split the installation before you split the bill. The inspection of the flat and a later repair can be different people's costs.
Reviewed 3 October 2026 by George Opsenica (Director, Codeex Maintenance Ltd). General guidance, not a reading of your own report and not legal advice.
Review details
- George Opsenica: service information and presentation.
- George Opsenica: service information and presentation.
Four checks before anyone names a payer
Use this as a way to organise the question in a London leasehold flat. It is not a ruling about who must pay.
Inside the flat
Check who is responsible for the demised electrical installation. The lease names the premises. This page does not.
Common parts and shared equipment
Check the freeholder or managing agent, and the lease clauses for the building's services.
Inspection fee
Look at who commissioned the inspection and what the report says was included.
Remedial work
Look at where the defect is and who is responsible for that part of the installation. That person may not be the one who paid for the visit.
Split the installation before you split the bill
The electrical installation inside the flat is the consumer unit, the circuits, and the accessories in that home. A report limited to one flat does not describe the common parts of the block. It also does not describe the riser or a landlord's supply in a cupboard on the stairs.
Common parts and shared supply equipment are a different inspection. The person who controls that equipment is often the freeholder or the managing agent, not the leaseholder who lives behind one front door. Who commissioned the inspection is a clue, not a conclusion.
Responsibility can turn on what was inspected, where that part of the installation sits, who controls it, what the lease allocates, and how the management or service-charge arrangements are written. None of those facts is a London-wide rule.
The inspection and the repair are different invoices
The invoice for inspecting the flat and the invoice for correcting a defect do not necessarily follow the same responsibility.
Agree each invoice from the scope, the location of the defect, and the lease. This page does not allocate either one, and it does not read the lease for you.
What to check, by part of the installation
The columns are a check, a location, and the people who may need to be in the conversation. There is no column for who definitely pays.
Area or equipment
What to check
Who may need to be involved
Consumer unit inside the flat
What to checkWhether the report includes that board and the circuits it feeds, and whether the lease treats the flat's wiring as part of the demised premises.
Who may need to be involvedThe person who controls the flat, and the leaseholder or landlord named for that home.
Socket or light circuit inside the flat
What to checkThat the circuit stays inside the flat and is fed from the flat's board.
Who may need to be involvedThe person responsible for the flat's installation. A managing agent comes in only if the lease puts that circuit on the building.
Communal corridor lighting
What to checkThat the fitting and its circuit are outside the flat, and whether the flat report describes them at all.
Who may need to be involvedThe freeholder or managing agent, and whoever holds the common-parts records.
Shared riser
What to checkWhether the riser was opened, limited, or left out of the flat report.
Who may need to be involvedThe person who controls the riser. A locked cupboard shows who holds the key. It does not name a payer.
Landlord or common-parts distribution equipment
What to checkThe description on the report, and whether that equipment serves more than one home.
Who may need to be involvedThe freeholder or managing agent. A landlord is involved when a supply that serves the letting is theirs to control.
A defect crossing the flat and the common parts
What to checkWhere the observation starts and where it stops. A limitation means that part was not confirmed.
Who may need to be involvedThe person responsible for the flat and the person responsible for the common parts, before anyone prices the work.
Three ways to think about the file
These are examples of how to separate the questions. They are not a customer's report, and they are not a conclusion about a building.
A leaseholder books the flat
A leaseholder commissions an EICR on their own flat. The useful question is the scope of that file.
Report scope. The report describes the flat that was booked. It does not become a report on the block.
Next document. What the lease says about the demised installation, and whether any observation sits outside that flat.
Who may need a call. The inspector, for what was included. The managing agent, if the file points past the front door.
A landlord lets a leasehold flat
A landlord owns a leasehold flat and lets it to a tenant. The inspection and a later repair are still two questions.
Report scope. The inspection the landlord needs for that rented home is the installation in that home.
Next document. The lease still allocates repair of the flat and of the building. The report does not replace those clauses.
Who may need a call. The landlord arranges the flat inspection. The freeholder or managing agent is the contact when the defect is in equipment they control.
The flat report meets the block
The flat EICR identifies, or cannot inspect, an issue in common or shared equipment.
Report scope. Read the limitation and the address. A report limited to one flat does not describe the common parts of the block.
Next document. Who controls the equipment that was not confirmed, and which document authorises work there.
Who may need a call. The managing agent or freeholder for access and for the common-parts records. Do not price that work from the flat file alone.
Before deciding who pays, get these four things
1. The EICR and the schedules
The observations, the limitations, and the address on the file.
2. The scope of the inspection
What was included, and what the report says was not opened or not tested.
3. The relevant lease clauses
Repair, the demised premises, and any service-charge wording. This page cannot read your lease for you, and it is not legal advice.
4. The common-parts contact
The managing agent or freeholder, when the question leaves the flat.
The lease allocates. A slogan does not.
Some leases put the flat's wiring on the leaseholder and the building's services on the freeholder. Some put more of the flat on the landlord. A managing agent may collect a cost through the service charge only where the lease allows that charge.
If the lease and the managing agent disagree, that dispute is about the documents, not about a universal London rule.
When the flat is let
If you are the landlord of a rented flat, the duty to have that flat's installation inspected is still yours to organise. Passing the PDF to the leaseholder does not, by itself, decide who pays for a later repair.
Agree the scope in writing before work starts in a part of the building you do not control.
The communal areas guide is the deeper page for an inspection of the block. A rented flat is arranged through the landlord EICR service. The visit itself is described on the EICR testing page.
Related pages
Arranging an inspection in a leasehold flat
Tell the team whether the visit is for the flat only, or whether common parts and shared equipment also need to be in scope. We arrange the inspection. We do not interpret the lease.
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