Guide
Which electrical work has to be notified
England narrowed the list in 2013. Wales did not follow and kept the wider original version. Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate regimes altogether, so the same socket can be notifiable on one side of a border and not the other.
England, since April 2013
Three things are notifiable: installing a new circuit, replacing a consumer unit, and any addition or alteration to an existing circuit in a special location, which in a home means a room containing a bath or a shower.
Everything else is not. Adding a socket on a spur in a bedroom, changing a light fitting, replacing a damaged accessory, repairs and maintenance: none of that has to be notified to anybody. That is a considerably shorter list than the one introduced in 2005, and a great deal of advice still circulating online describes the older version.
Wales kept the longer list
The Welsh regulations were amended in July 2014 and did not adopt England's narrowing. In Wales the original scope still applies, so additions and alterations in kitchens, in rooms containing a bath or shower, and outdoors are all notifiable.
That means an outside socket, a garden lighting circuit, a supply to a shed and an extra socket in a kitchen are notifiable in Cardiff and not in Bristol. It is the kind of difference that gets missed by national advice, and it changes who can lawfully sign a small job off.
Scotland and Northern Ireland
Part P is an England and Wales instrument and does not apply in either. Scotland works to its own building standards, where electrical installations have to comply and a building warrant is required for certain work, and where the trade body SELECT and the UK schemes both operate.
Northern Ireland has its own building regulations and its own control process. In both nations the practical advice is the same as in England and Wales: the certificate for the work is the thing you need to end up holding, whatever the route to it was.
How the notification actually happens
Two routes. A registered business notifies through its scheme after the work, which is included in the price and generates a building regulations compliance certificate that arrives by post a few weeks later. Or you apply to building control yourself, before the work starts, and pay their fee, which for a single job is often more than the job.
The third route, doing notifiable work and notifying nobody, produces an installation with no compliance certificate. Nothing happens on the day. It happens when the house is sold and the buyer's solicitor asks for paperwork that does not exist, and the fix at that point is a regularisation application and an inspection.
Common questions
Can I do my own electrical work?
Nothing in the regulations forbids a householder doing competent work on their own home. Notifiable work still has to be notified, which means a building control application in advance, and all work still has to be safe and certified.
Is adding a socket in a kitchen notifiable?
In Wales, yes. In England, no, unless it is in a room containing a bath or shower. Kitchens came off the English list in 2013 and stayed on the Welsh one.
What happens if past work was never notified?
A regularisation application to building control, with an inspection, is the route. It is more expensive than notifying at the time and it is a solvable problem rather than a permanent one.