How to Choose an Electrician: 7 Questions to Ask

By Steven Dixon · NAPIT-registered electrician, Royal Artillery veteran (26 years) · Published 8 September 2026 · Bradford, West Yorkshire

Almost everything an electrician does disappears behind plaster the moment it is finished. You cannot inspect it, you will not see it again, and the difference between excellent work and dangerous work looks identical from the sofa.

That is why choosing well matters more here than it does with a decorator or a joiner, where bad work announces itself. These are the seven questions worth asking, what a good answer sounds like, and the ones that should end the conversation.

1. Which scheme are you registered with, and what is your number?

The single most useful question, and it takes sixty seconds to verify.

Registration is not the same as qualification. Plenty of people hold electrical qualifications. Registration with a Competent Person Scheme — NAPIT, NICEIC, ELECSA or STROMA — means an assessor visits annually, inspects their work, checks their test instruments are calibrated and confirms their insurance. It is also what allows them to self-certify notifiable work.

Ask for the scheme and the number. Then check it yourself:

• napit.org.uk/find-an-installer
• niceic.com/find-a-contractor
• trustmark.org.uk — the government-endorsed register, which cross-checks the scheme, insurance and complaints process

A registered installer gives you the number without a pause. Hesitation, or "I don't bother with all that", is the end of the conversation. For reference: Dixon Electrical is NAPIT 78906 and TrustMark licence 3907641 — both are checkable at the links above, and you should check them.

2. Is this job notifiable, and who notifies it?

Part P of the Building Regulations covers electrical safety in homes in England and Wales. Some work must be notified to Building Control:

• A new circuit
• A consumer unit replacement
• Any work in a special location — bathrooms, and around swimming pools

Adding a socket to an existing circuit in an ordinary room generally is not notifiable. A registered installer notifies the rest automatically and the certificate lands with your council without you doing anything.

If they are not registered, the duty falls to you: apply to Building Control, pay their fee — typically £200-£500 — and arrange an inspection. That cost belongs in any comparison of quotes. And an unregistered installer telling you a consumer unit change "doesn't need notifying" is either uninformed or hoping you are. gov.uk reference.

3. What certificate will I get?

Three documents, and the right one depends on the job:

If the paperwork offered does not match the job, ask why. A Minor Works form for a consumer unit is the classic mismatch — it is the wrong document and it suggests the circuits were not fully tested.

You should also receive a schedule of test results with actual readings, not just a page saying satisfactory. Without the numbers, the next inspector has no baseline to compare against. Our EICR guide explains what those readings mean.

4. Can I see your insurance?

£2 million public liability is the standard minimum for domestic work; £5 million is often required commercially. Ask to see the certificate and look at the expiry date — an expired policy is common and rarely deliberate.

This protects you rather than them. If a fault causes a fire six months later, your insurer will look to recover from the installer. An uninsured sole trader has nothing to recover from, and the question of whether your own policy pays out can get uncomfortable if the work was uncertificated.

5. Is this a fixed price, and what would change it?

"From £x" is not a quote. A proper quote is written, fixed, and states the scope clearly: what is included, what is excluded, and what happens if something unexpected turns up.

Electrical work does throw up surprises — that is honest. What matters is how the quote handles them. Good practice is a stated hourly rate for unforeseen remedial work, agreed with you before it is done, rather than an invoice that has quietly grown by £600.

Ask specifically what is excluded. On most of our quotes that is plastering and making good: we patch the chases, but we do not skim or decorate, and we say so up front rather than leaving it to be discovered. An electrician who is vague about exclusions is leaving room to argue later.

6. Will you test before you quote?

An underrated question, and the answer tells you a lot.

For anything substantial — a board change, a rewire, an extension — the honest answer involves testing what is already there. A modern RCBO consumer unit finds every fault an old fuse box tolerated for thirty years. Fitting one without testing first is how a £700 job becomes a £2,500 argument with the family's power off.

Someone willing to quote a consumer unit replacement over the phone without seeing the property is quoting for the easy version and will find the difference later. A condition report first costs £150-£250 and converts an unknown into a fixed price.

7. What happens if something goes wrong afterwards?

Ask about the workmanship guarantee and what it actually covers. Twelve months is common, longer is better, and the important detail is who honours it if the business stops trading.

This is where TrustMark registration earns its keep: it requires a complaints and dispute resolution process, so there is somewhere to go that is not the small claims court. Scheme membership does something similar — NAPIT and NICEIC both operate complaints procedures against their registered members.

Also worth asking: how quickly do they respond to a callback? Everyone is attentive before the invoice. The measure of a firm is what happens when a switch stops working eight months later.

The answers that should end the conversation

• "Cash only, no paperwork." No certificate, no comeback, no insurance claim, and a problem at conveyancing.
• "You don't need a certificate for that." Sometimes true for a socket. Never true for a consumer unit, a new circuit or bathroom work.
• "I'm qualified" — when you asked whether they were registered. Those are different things and the substitution is deliberate.
• "This price is only good today." Pressure selling has no place in a trade where the work is invisible afterwards.
• A long remedial quote built on C3 items. C3 means improvement recommended. C3s do not fail an EICR. Anyone quoting thousands to clear a list of C3s is selling you work you do not need.
• No company details. A registered company number, a real address and a landline or business mobile. All checkable at Companies House in a minute.

The bottom line

Check the registration number yourself rather than taking it on trust. Establish who notifies Building Control. Confirm which certificate you are getting. See the insurance. Get the price in writing with the exclusions stated. Ask whether they will test before committing to a number. And find out what happens if something fails later.

Seven questions, ten minutes, on a job you will live with for twenty years and never see again. Any electrician worth hiring will be glad you asked — it is a decent proxy for the sort of customer who pays on time and does not argue about the scope.

If you want to see the answers before you ring, they are on our about page, and the 30-second safety check will tell you roughly what your installation needs first.