A folder of certificates cannot tell you which one is missing

A folder of certificates can tell you what you have. It cannot tell you what you have not got.

That is the whole problem, and it is why a shared drive full of PDFs feels like compliance right up until the morning somebody asks a question it cannot answer.

Every certificate in the folder is a certificate you remembered to file. The dangerous ones are the ones nobody ever created — and by definition they leave no trace in a system that only records what arrived.

Absence has no filename

Put forty properties on a drive. Each has a folder. Some folders have four documents, some have two, one has none because it was set up in a hurry last March.

Now answer this: which properties are missing an EICR?

You cannot, except by knowing in advance what each property was supposed to have and checking one by one. The drive has no opinion about what ought to be there. It is a filing cabinet, and filing cabinets do not chase.

Any system that genuinely helps has to start from the required set for each property and show you the difference. Everything else is storage.

The four states everyone tracks, and the fifth that catches people

Most people mentally sort certificates into four buckets: in date, due soon, expired, not held.

There is a fifth, and it is the one that quietly does the damage: on file, but with no expiry date recorded.

Somebody uploaded a PDF. Nobody typed in when it runs out. In a folder-based system that property now looks covered — there is a document there, after all. In reality its status is unknown, which is not the same as compliant and should never be shown in green.

If your system cannot distinguish “in date” from “we have a file and no idea”, it is telling you something it does not know.

The EICR limb almost everyone misses

For a privately rented property in England, the regulations require inspection and testing “at intervals of no more than 5 years” — and most people stop reading there.

The next sub-paragraph matters just as much. Where the most recent report requires inspection and testing at intervals of less than five years, the landlord must work to the interval specified in that report, not to the five-year default.

So a property whose EICR says re-inspect in three years is out of compliance at year four, even though five years have not passed and even though the certificate on file still shows a date in the future. A folder cannot catch that. It has the document, the document is not expired by its own headline date, and the actual obligation is buried in the report’s recommendation.

This is exactly the kind of thing that has to be recorded as a date to be tracked against, at the point the report is filed, by somebody who has read it.

Not everything you are told is a legal requirement actually is

A surprising amount of what circulates as statutory duty is guidance, a British Standard, a contractual term, or a supplier’s renewal cycle. Three worth knowing, because they come up constantly:

• Legionella. The HSE states plainly that “health and safety law does not require landlords to obtain or produce a ‘legionella test certificate’”, and that “the law does not prescribe that the risk assessment be reviewed on an annual or biennial basis”. There is a real duty to assess and control risk. There is no statutory annual certificate.
• PAT testing. Not a legal requirement in England and Wales, and not annual. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require equipment to be maintained in a safe condition; how often you inspect is risk-based. Scotland has separate requirements for landlord-supplied appliances.
• Fire alarm servicing intervals. Usually BS 5839, which is a standard, not legislation.

None of this makes those things optional or unwise. It changes who is imposing the duty and what happens if you miss it — and if your board badges everything identically as “required”, you cannot make that judgement when you are short of time and have to prioritise.

Not applicable is a real answer

An all-electric flat does not need a gas safety record. If your system has no way to say so, one of two things happens: the property sits permanently red and everyone learns to ignore red, or somebody deletes the requirement and the reason disappears with it.

Mark it not applicable, with a reason, and keep the reason. “Why is that not being tracked?” is a question you will eventually be asked, quite possibly by someone with a clipboard.

The gap opens at handover, not at expiry

Most missing certificates are not missing because someone forgot to renew. They are missing because the certificate was issued, emailed, and never filed anywhere the tracking system could see.

The engineer finishes, generates the record, sends it to whoever booked the job. It lands in an inbox. It gets forwarded. Somebody means to upload it. Two weeks later nobody can say whether it exists.

The fix is unglamorous: file it at the moment of issue, against the property, from the person who did the work. Every hop between the engineer and the filing system is a place for it to stop.

What to check on your own portfolio this week

• Which properties have a certificate on file with no expiry date recorded? Start there — those are the ones currently miscounted as fine.
• Which EICRs specify a re-inspection interval shorter than five years, and is that shorter date the one you are tracking?
• Which properties were added in a hurry and never had their required set defined at all?
• Which items on your list are actually law, and which are standards or contract? Are you spending your chasing time on the right ones?

How ServicePay handles it

Compliance tracking starts from what each property is required to hold rather than from what happens to have been uploaded, so the board shows gaps rather than just files. Mark a property as let and the statutory set for England is added for you. Every item is badged by where the duty comes from — law, British Standard, guidance, contract, or your own rule — and “no expiry recorded” gets its own state and its own colour, so it can never be mistaken for a pass. Not applicable, with a reason, is a first-class answer.

Certificates are filed against the property, the job and the customer in a single upload from the person who issued them, using certificate and document storage — which closes the inbox gap where most of them are lost. Put a code on the boiler or the consumer unit and the attending engineer can file it by scanning the panel, without ringing your office first.

Managing agents get their own portal showing the status of their properties and nothing else — no prices, no other agent’s portfolio — which is what stops the phone calls asking whether the gas certificate is done.

One thing we will not tell you: that any of this makes you compliant. Software tracks documents. The legal duty stays with the landlord, and with you for the work you certify. What you get is visibility, and evidence of what was held and what was chased.

Common questions

How often does a rented property in England need an EICR?

At intervals of no more than five years — and where the most recent report requires a shorter interval, at the interval that report specifies. Scotland and Wales have their own rules. Always work to the report’s recommendation where it is shorter than five years.

What is the penalty for missing electrical safety certificates?

Government guidance states that local councils may impose a financial penalty of up to £40,000 on landlords in breach of specified duties under the electrical safety regulations. Gas offences are dealt with under health and safety law, where fines are not capped in the same way.

Is a legionella certificate a legal requirement for landlords?

No. The HSE states that health and safety law does not require landlords to obtain or produce a ‘legionella test certificate’, and that the law does not prescribe reviewing the risk assessment annually or every two years. Assessing and controlling the risk is a genuine duty; the certificate is not.

Is PAT testing legally required every year?

Not in England and Wales. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require equipment to be maintained in a safe condition, and inspection frequency is risk-based rather than fixed. Scotland has additional requirements for appliances supplied by a landlord.

Why does a shared drive not work for compliance tracking?

Because it can only list what was uploaded. It has no view on what each property was required to hold, so it cannot show you an absence — and absences are the entire risk.