Electrics for Blackpool guest houses and holiday lets

• EICR for the whole building, usually every five years
• PAT test guest appliances, typically every year
• Emergency lighting: monthly test and annual three-hour test
• Landlord bundle from £165; PAT from £1.20 per item

We have looked after guest houses on the South Shore and the North Shore since the firm started. Most are Victorian or Edwardian houses that have been extended, divided and rewired in bits, with twenty guests a week plugging in hair dryers and chargers. This guide sets out which rules apply to which kind of business, what is a legal duty and what is simply sensible, and what to check before the season starts.

Guest house, holiday let or HMO: which rules apply?

The label on your business decides which rules you follow, so start there.

A guest house or B&B provides rooms, usually with breakfast, to guests who stay a few nights. It is a business premises, so the main rules come from workplace and fire safety law, not the landlord regulations.

A holiday let is a whole property, or a self-contained flat, let to guests for short stays with no landlord living on site. It is also a business premises for fire safety, and booking platforms and insurers ask for the same paperwork a guest house would hold.

An HMO, a house in multiple occupation, is a house let to people who live there as their home and share facilities. A lot of former guest houses on the South Shore have become HMOs. In England, an HMO with five or more people from two or more households needs a mandatory licence from the council, and the private rented sector electrical safety rules apply to the tenancies in it.

Some premises are a mix: a guest house with a long-term lodger in the basement, say. If you are not sure, Blackpool Council’s housing team will tell you, and the safe assumption is the stricter standard.

EICRs for commercial and holiday lets

An EICR, an electrical installation condition report, is an inspection and test of the fixed wiring: the consumer unit (the fuse box), circuits, sockets and light fittings. It is the document everyone will ask you for.

For a privately rented home or an HMO in England, the law requires an EICR at least every five years, with a copy to tenants and, on request, the council. For a guest house or holiday let no law names an interval, but the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require the electrical system to be maintained so as to prevent danger, and an EICR is the accepted way of showing that. Trade guidance recommends five years for hotels and guest houses, and we treat that as the longest gap, shorter for older buildings or where the last report found a lot wrong.

Our commercial EICR starts from £195 including VAT, priced per board and the number of circuits, with a written quote first. We can usually inspect a guest house in a day in the quiet months without closing a single room.

PAT testing

PAT, portable appliance testing, is checking the things that plug in: kettles, hair dryers, lamps, TVs, the toaster in the breakfast room. No law says “PAT test every year”. There is a duty under the Electricity at Work Regulations to keep electrical equipment safe, and PAT testing is the usual way of meeting it and proving it.

How often depends on the equipment and how hard it is used. A wall-mounted TV can go longer than a hair dryer that is dropped on a tiled floor twice a week. For most guest houses we suggest an annual visit before the season, with a quick look at guest-room kit at changeover.

We charge from £1.20 per item, with a minimum visit charge of £75. A typical nine-room guest house is a morning’s work.

Fire alarms and emergency lighting

Fire is where the law has real teeth. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to any premises where people pay to sleep, from a 20-room hotel on the Promenade to a one-bedroom holiday flat. The responsible person has to carry out a fire risk assessment, record it in full, act on it and review it. Since late 2023 the full written record is required however few staff you have.

The fire risk assessment decides what alarm and lighting you need; it is not the electrician’s call. In practice, a guest house will need a fire alarm system to the British Standard for buildings, BS 5839-1, with detectors in bedrooms, corridors and escape routes, and a control panel. A small holiday let can often meet its assessment with interlinked mains-powered smoke and heat alarms to the domestic standard, BS 5839-6. Emergency lighting, the lights that come on when the power fails so guests can find the stairs, is designed to BS 5266-1.

Both systems need testing. The alarm gets a weekly test from a call point, which you can do and log yourself, and a periodic inspection by an engineer. Emergency lighting gets a short monthly function test and an annual full-duration test, where the lights run on battery for their rated time, usually three hours. Our annual emergency lighting test starts from £120, and we leave a log book if you have not got one.

When the fire service inspects a guest house, the first things they ask for are the risk assessment, the alarm log book and the emergency lighting test records.

Blackpool Council licensing

Blackpool Council runs a selective licensing scheme covering parts of the inner town. It applies to privately rented homes, not to guest houses or holiday lets as such, but a guest house that has quietly become long-term lets, or a holiday flat with a tenant on a six-month agreement, falls into it. Licences carry conditions on electrical safety, fire precautions and alarms, and the council’s housing team does visit.

Larger shared houses need an HMO licence whatever the area, and converting a guest house into flats or an HMO also needs planning permission. Check the council’s licensing map before you change how a property is used, not after.

Whatever the scheme, the paperwork they want is the same: a current EICR, evidence that the alarm and emergency lighting are tested, and certificates for any electrical work done.

Insurance and booking platforms

Insurers increasingly ask for a current EICR and PAT records at renewal, and some will not pay out on an electrical fire claim without them. Read the policy conditions, because some name an interval.

Booking platforms ask for safety declarations, and some now require a fire risk assessment, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and, for some listings, an EICR to be uploaded. A guest who has an accident and finds you cannot produce any of it will have a strong case.

A season-start checklist

Here is what we run through with guest house owners in February and March, before Easter brings the first coach parties.

• Find your last EICR. Check the date and whether the urgent items were put right. If it is approaching five years old, or you cannot find it, book one.
• Check the fire risk assessment is written down, reviewed in the last year and still matches the building.
• Test the fire alarm from a call point and write it in the log. Then set a weekly reminder.
• Press the test switch on the emergency lights and make sure they all come on. Book the annual test if it is due.
• Press the test button on every RCD in the consumer units.
• Walk every guest room and look at sockets, switches and light fittings for cracks, scorch marks or loose faceplates, especially behind the bedside tables.
• Gather up the hair dryers, kettles and lamps for PAT testing and throw out anything with a damaged flex.
• Check outdoor lighting and any sockets in the yard or on the front steps. A winter of salt spray off the Promenade can wreck a fitting in one season.
• Put the certificates and logs in one folder so a fire officer, insurer or council visit takes ten minutes rather than a morning.

Need a hand?

We look after guest houses, holiday lets and HMOs across Blackpool, from the North Shore to Squires Gate. Our commercial inspection and testing page covers EICRs and PAT, and emergency lighting and fire alarms covers the rest. Use the contact page to tell us about your property and we will put a season-start package together.