Who can sign an electrical certificate
Anyone competent to do the work they are certifying can sign a BS 7671 certificate: no single qualification is required by law, and membership of a competent person scheme is the usual proof. The designer, installer and inspector each sign their own declaration, and one person can sign all three if they did all three.
Last updated 15 October 2026. Written by the CertSync team and checked against the standards.
The short answer
There’s no single legally mandated qualification for signing a BS 7671 certificate — competence is the requirement, and competent-person-scheme membership is the practical industry proxy. A certificate carries separate design, construction, and inspection-and-testing declarations; one person can sign all three if they carried out all three. The person signing is responsible for their own qualifications — CertSync doesn’t verify them.
Competence, not a fixed qualification list
BS 7671 requires the person responsible for electrical work to be competent, but the law doesn’t name one single mandatory qualification that makes someone competent to sign. In practice, membership of a registered competent-person scheme is the industry’s practical proxy for demonstrating that competence.
That means the honest answer to “who can sign” is “a competent person” — and it’s the person doing the work, and their employer or scheme, who carry responsibility for making sure that’s true. CertSync doesn’t verify anyone’s qualifications; the person signing enters their own details and takes responsibility for their accuracy.
Three separate declarations
A BS 7671 certificate — an EIC, for example — carries separate declarations for design, construction, and inspection and testing. Where one person carried out all three roles on a job, a single signature can cover all three declarations. Where different people did different parts, each signs for their own role.
This split matters because it records who is accountable for what, not just that the job as a whole was signed off by somebody.
The Qualified Supervisor role
Within a scheme-registered business, the Qualified Supervisor is the named person responsible for the technical standard of the work the business self-certifies. It’s a scheme-membership role rather than a certificate-signing role in itself, but it’s often the reason a business can self-certify notifiable work at all.
Commonly referenced qualifications
Several qualifications are commonly referenced across the industry as evidence of competence, though none of them is a standalone legal requirement to sign a certificate: the 18th Edition wiring regulations qualification (City & Guilds 2382); an inspection and testing qualification such as City & Guilds 2391-52, which combines what used to be the separate 2394 and 2395 qualifications; and, for PAT work, competence assessed against the IET Code of Practice for in-service inspection and testing.
For specialist certificate types the reference points differ again: EVCP grant-funded work generally expects an OZEV-approved-installer route under the IET EV Code of Practice; fire alarm work to BS 5839-1 commonly involves BAFE SP203-1 third-party certification; emergency lighting work is assessed against BS 5266 competence; and Solar PV installations commonly use MCS registration. These are industry norms, not requirements CertSync checks or enforces.
Frequently asked questions
- Does CertSync check my qualifications before I can sign a certificate?
- No. You enter your own qualifications and scheme details, and you’re responsible for their accuracy. Verifying competence is the responsibility of the person signing, not the platform.
- Can one person sign all three declarations on an EIC?
- Yes, if they genuinely carried out the design, construction, and inspection and testing themselves. Where different people did different parts, each person signs for the role they actually performed.
- Do I need City & Guilds 2391-52 to sign an EICR?
- There’s no single legally mandated qualification — 2391-52 (or the older 2394/2395 combination it replaced) is commonly referenced as evidence of inspection-and-testing competence, but competent-person-scheme membership is the practical industry standard most electricians rely on.
- What’s a Qualified Supervisor?
- It’s the named person within a scheme-registered business who is responsible for the technical standard of the work the business self-certifies under its scheme membership — a scheme-registration role, not a certificate-signing declaration in itself.
- Is MCS registration required to sign a Solar PV certificate?
- MCS registration is commonly referenced in the solar PV industry, particularly where a job needs to remain eligible for certain schemes, but it isn’t a universal legal requirement to sign every solar PV commissioning record.
Disclaimer
This guide describes general industry practice. It is general information, not professional advice, and does not replace professional judgement, scheme-body rules or current regulatory requirements, and CertSync does not verify the qualifications of anyone using the platform — that responsibility remains with the person signing. The contractor named on a certificate is responsible for what it certifies.
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