Does the social housing extension apply from 1 November to everything?

No, and the staging is the useful detail. The requirements come into force on 1 November 2025 for most purposes, while social tenancies granted before 1 December 2025 come within them from 1 May 2026. Registered providers are working to that sequence now, which is why procurement activity is running ahead of the dates.

How is EICR income valued compared with installation work?

More generously, because it recurs on a schedule set by regulation rather than by a customer decision, which makes it forecastable in a way installation work never is. The size of the difference depends on whether the work is documented, contracted and demonstrably retained across more than one cycle.

What is my testing book worth on its own?

It is rarely sold separately, and it is usually the line that decides the multiple applied to the whole business. A buyer looking at two electrical contractors with identical profit will pay more for the one whose earnings come substantially from scheduled compliance work, because those earnings survive the owner leaving and can be forecast with some confidence rather than assumed from a good year.

What records should I be keeping to prove the cycle?

A live schedule of installations or properties by client with last inspection date, next due date and price, reconciled to the certificates and the invoices. That one document answers most of what a buyer asks about recurring income, and keeping it current costs far less than reconstructing it later.

EICRs and the Five-Year Clock: Why This Income Compounds

The RegimeWhy this income arrives whether anybody sells anything or not

Private landlords in England have needed an electrical installation condition report on every rented dwelling at least every five years since the 2020 regulations came in, applying to new tenancies from 1 June 2020 and to all existing tenancies from 1 April 2021. The report goes to the tenant, the landlord keeps it until the next inspection, and remedial work identified has to be carried out within a defined window.

That single requirement turned a discretionary service into a clock. A contractor who inspected two hundred properties in 2021 has two hundred inspections falling due in 2026, without a tender, a bid or a phone call from a competitor, provided the client is still happy with them. Very little else in electrical contracting behaves that way, which is why buyers treat the line differently from everything around it.

The same logic runs through commercial fixed wire testing, where the recommended intervals under BS 7671 vary by installation type but the principle is identical. Work that is scheduled by a standard rather than by a customer decision is work that arrives on a predictable date, and predictability is precisely what a buyer is paying a multiple for.

The ExtensionThe regime widens from 1 November

The regulations extending electrical safety standards from the private rented sector into the social rented sector were laid before Parliament on 25 June 2025 and come into force on 1 November 2025 for most purposes. Social tenancies granted before 1 December 2025 come within the requirements from 1 May 2026, which gives registered providers a staged runway rather than a single date.

Two features matter commercially. The five-yearly inspection requirement now reaches a very large tranche of housing stock that was outside it, held by landlords who manage portfolios rather than individual properties. And social landlords face a separate duty to inspect and test the electrical equipment they supply under the tenancy, which is a different exercise from the fixed installation and a different revenue line with its own cycle.

The practical effect for a contractor with housing sector work is that the addressable programme gets larger and the buyers of it get more institutional. Registered providers procure through frameworks, they want reporting rather than certificates in a carrier bag, and they inspect their supply chain. That raises the cost of entry, which is unwelcome while you are winning the work and extremely welcome when you come to sell it.

The ModelHow a buyer models a cyclical book

They start by rebuilding your cycle. Properties or installations by client, the date each was last inspected, the date each falls due, and the price. That produces a forward schedule rather than a revenue figure, and a forward schedule is the thing that supports a multiple. An owner who can produce it in an afternoon is in a materially stronger position than one who can produce last year's invoices.

Then they test retention. What proportion of the properties you inspected five years ago did you inspect again, and where the answer is low, why. Portfolio clients change contractors at procurement rather than at renewal, so the framework or contract position behind the work is read alongside the retention figure. A ninety per cent recurrence rate with two years left on the contract is a very different asset from the same rate with a re-tender next spring.

Finally they look at what the cycle does to your working capital and your labour. A book concentrated into two quarters of the year needs more engineers than the annual revenue suggests and leaves them underused in the other two. A buyer with their own testing teams may see that as an opportunity to smooth. A buyer without them will price the seasonality as a cost, and it is worth knowing which conversation you are in before it starts.

A forward schedule of what falls due, and when, is the document that supports a multiple. Last year's invoices are not.

Price the Cycle Properly

Scheduled compliance income is weighed separately from project work here, and that separation is most of the answer. The exercise is private and puts nothing on the market.

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