BS 7671 Amendment 4: what actually changes on your certificates

If you certify electrical work in the UK, one date matters this autumn: 15 October 2026. That's when the version of BS 7671 you've been working to is withdrawn, and Amendment 4 becomes the standard your certificates are issued against.

Here's what actually changes on the paperwork, what you need in place before October, and one thing you're being sold that you probably don't need.

The dates

• 15 April 2026 — BS 7671:2018+A4:2026 published. Known as the Orange Book. You could start using it that day.
• 15 April to 15 October 2026 — both versions live. You can work and certify to either one.
• 15 October 2026 — the previous version (BS 7671:2018+A2:2022+A3:2024 and the Corrigendum 2023) is withdrawn. Amendment 4 is now the current standard.

During the transition the rule is consistency: the forms you issue should match the version you designed and tested to. Don't design to one and certify on the other's paperwork, and don't switch halfway through a job.

Work you certified before the changeover stands. A certificate is a record of work done to the standard in force at the time — you don't go back and reissue anything, and an EICR keeps the next-inspection date written on it.

What changes on the EICR

This is the one most domestic and landlord work will feel, because the observations section has been reorganised.

Previously every observation — C1, C2, C3 and FI — went in one list, and the reader had to work out which entries actually made the report unsatisfactory. Amendment 4 splits that into two parts:

• Part one: C1 and C2. Danger present, and potentially dangerous. These are the codes that drive an unsatisfactory outcome.
• Part two: C3 and FI. Improvement recommended, and items needing further investigation. These don't make the report unsatisfactory on their own.

The wording around FI is softened at the same time. An FI now reads as further investigation being advised, where it used to say required without delay, and it sits with C3 instead of alongside the codes that fail the report. The notes and the guidance for the person receiving the report have been redrafted too.

If you've ever had a landlord or a letting agent read an FI on a report and panic about a property being unlettable, you'll see the point of the change. The layout now does some of that explaining for you.

What changes on the EIC

Two things worth knowing before you print anything.

A new earthing arrangement. TN-C-S now splits into two tick-boxes: TN-C-S (PME), the protective multiple earthing you'll know, and TN-C-S (PNB) — protective neutral bonding — which appears in BS 7671 for the first time and is referenced on the new forms. PNB isn't common in domestic work, and it may or may not be labelled on site. If you're not sure what you're connected to, the distributor has to tell you the earthing type free of charge, so ask them rather than guess.

The schedules have grown. The Schedule of Inspections picks up an item for prosumer low-voltage installations — the bidirectional stuff: solar PV, battery storage, vehicle-to-grid. There's also a new schedule of test results for recording the resistance of supplementary protective equipotential bonding conductors.

Beyond the forms, the technical changes with the most reach are a new chapter on stationary secondary batteries (battery storage, with and without PV), a new section on functional earthing and bonding for ICT equipment, a new section on Power over Ethernet, and a substantial rewrite of medical locations. Battery storage is the one most likely to turn up in a domestic van's week.

The exact field-by-field layout is easier to see than to read about: the IET publishes the A4:2026 model forms — EIC, minor works and EICR — as free PDF downloads, alongside the older versions. Pull them down and put them next to your current templates.

The course you're probably being sold

Search for Amendment 4 and you'll find training providers offering an update course, often around £400–£500, described in terms that make it sound compulsory.

Check that against what the schemes actually say. NICEIC's published guidance is direct: if you already hold an 18th Edition qualification, it is not requiring you to upgrade to the latest amendment. What it does expect is that you're conversant with the changes affecting the work you do, and that you do relevant CPD — for which it points at its own free webinars, technical guidance and workbook.

That's a meaningfully different requirement from a paid exam, and the difference is a few hundred pounds. A course is a perfectly good way to get up to speed if you learn better in a classroom, and the qualification has its own value. Just buy it because you decided to, not because a marketing page implied your registration depends on it. Confirm with your own scheme — NICEIC, NAPIT, SELECT — before you spend.

What you genuinely do need from 15 October is access to a copy of the standard. Scheme rules require you to hold the current edition of BS 7671, so an assessment after that date will expect you to show it. The book is £125 from the NICEIC shop, with a digital version available under an annual licence.

Your October checklist

1. Get the book. Or the licence. This is the one that will actually come up at assessment.
2. Download the A4:2026 model forms from the IET and compare them to what you're issuing now.
3. Update your templates. Whatever you certify on — scheme software, a certification app, your own pads — needs to be on the A4 forms before 15 October. If you use scheme software, check when their update lands; if you use your own, this is the job to do on a wet Tuesday, not on 14 October.
4. Decide your switchover date and stick to it, so you're not running two versions across one job.
5. Do the CPD and record it. Free scheme webinars count. Write down what you did and when — that's the bit people forget, and it's the bit that gets asked about.
6. Tell anyone who quotes on your behalf, if that's not just you, so quotes issued in September for October work assume the right standard.

Where this leaves your admin

Amendment 4 is a paperwork event more than a working-practice one. For most domestic sparks the day job barely moves; what moves is every template with a form number on it, and the record of what you did to stay current.

That's the part worth being organised about. Certification is its own specialism — grafter.ly isn't cert software and doesn't try to be. It's where the rest of the job lives: the enquiry that came in, the quote you sent, the visit you booked, the invoice and whether it's been paid. If your certificates live in a cert app and everything else lives across a phone, a notebook and an inbox, the standard changing is a good moment to fix the second half of that.

The one thing worth setting up either way: know when each property's next inspection is due, and against which report. An EICR you did in 2026 comes back around in 2031, and the customer won't remind you.

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Sources. Publication and withdrawal dates from the IET's press release of 15 April 2026 and NICEIC's Amendment 4 guidance and FAQs, which is also the source for the qualification and access-to-the-standard positions and the £125 book price. Model forms are published free by the IET at electrical.theiet.org. Form-level detail on the observations split, the PNB earthing option and the schedule changes is drawn from published summaries of the amendment; the model forms themselves are the thing to check against your own templates. All checked 23 August 2026 — if you're reading this after October 2026, treat the transition dates as history and the rest as still current.