The 6-year electrical record keeping rule explained
UK electricians registered with NICEIC, NAPIT, or SELECT are required to keep job records for 6 years. Here's what that means in practice, what records count, and how to manage it without extra admin.
slug: electrical-record-keeping-6-years title: The 6-year electrical record keeping rule explained description: UK electricians registered with NICEIC, NAPIT, or SELECT are required to keep job records for 6 years. Here's what that means in practice, what records count, and how to manage it without extra admin. date: 2026-05-03 tags:
- Compliance readingTime: 5 min read author: CircuitCapture
If you're registered with NICEIC, NAPIT, or SELECT, you're required to retain records of notifiable electrical work for six years from the date of completion. For most sole traders, this sits somewhere between "I know I should sort that" and "I've got it covered" — but the specifics matter more than people realise.
Where the 6-year requirement comes from
The six-year retention period is a requirement of the major UK competent person schemes — NICEIC, NAPIT, and SELECT — rather than a specific clause in BS 7671 or the Building Regulations directly.
The number itself is not arbitrary. Six years is the standard limitation period for contract disputes under the Limitation Act 1980 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (five years in Scotland under the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, though schemes typically apply a six-year standard across the UK for simplicity). If a customer raises a dispute or an insurance claim arises from work you completed five years ago, your job records are the primary evidence that the work was carried out correctly.
Scheme assessors also use the six-year window. Your annual assessment samples recent work, but records from previous years need to be retrievable if queried.
What counts as a record
A compliant job record for a notifiable electrical installation does not need to be elaborate. It should include:
- The address of the property
- The date the work was completed
- The scope of works — what was installed or modified, in enough detail to understand the job
- Your scheme registration number (NICEIC, NAPIT, or SELECT)
- The associated certification document — EIC, EICR, or Minor Works Certificate as applicable
The certification document and the job record are separate things, but they should be stored together. An EIC filed in one folder and a job brief filed somewhere else creates retrieval problems under assessment pressure.
Digital vs paper
Both are acceptable to scheme assessors. Digital records have a significant practical advantage over six years: they don't degrade, they don't get lost in a house move or a van clear-out, and they're searchable. A folder of PDFs organised by date and address is considerably easier to navigate than a box of paper.
The one requirement is that digital records remain accessible for the full six years. Keeping records in an app that might cease to exist, or on a laptop without a backup, introduces unnecessary risk.
What happens if you can't produce records
If you're asked to produce records during an assessment — or following a dispute or enforcement action — and you can't, the consequences depend on the context.
In an assessment setting, gaps in records will prompt questions about the completeness of your scheme compliance. Persistent gaps can affect your registration status.
In a legal or insurance context, an inability to evidence the work carried out weakens your position significantly. Your records are your defence.
Making 6-year retention automatic
The most reliable way to maintain six years of records without extra administrative effort is to generate a structured job record as a natural output of each job, stored digitally from the start.
CircuitCapture stores your full job history automatically — every job brief and estimate is retained and searchable by client name, address, and date. Your scheme registration number appears on every document. There's no separate record-keeping task; the record is created when you produce the quote.
When your assessor asks for a job from eighteen months ago, you search, find it, and send it — in seconds rather than minutes.
Summary
The 6-year electrical record keeping requirement applies to all UK electricians registered with NICEIC, NAPIT, or SELECT. A compliant record includes the address, date, scope of works, scheme number, and associated certification documents. Digital records are preferable for long-term manageability. The simplest approach is to generate the record automatically as part of the quoting process — so record keeping requires no effort beyond the work you're already doing.