For small electrical contracting businesses, compliance is not a separate exercise from day-to-day work, but sits behind every installation, every certificate issued, and every decision made on site. When you are responsible for a team of electricians working on multiple sites and projects, competence has to be consistent, current, and appropriate to the work being undertaken – without needing someone to directly micromanage every task completed by your team.
Ongoing and initial training
For many employers, questions around compliance training are closely linked to how to get electrician gold card standards embedded throughout their workforce. In practice, this is less about the initial qualification process and more about maintaining recognised levels of competence through structured training that reflects the work being undertaken.
This is where ongoing CPD and refresher courses play a practical role for contractors; not as a replacement for experience, but as a way of aligning your team’s abilities and knowledge with the latest regulations, guidance, and expectations for commercial and industrial environments.
Read on as we discuss how to build a competence training plan for your electrical team.
Step One: Define the scope of work before selecting training
The first step in building a compliance training plan is understanding the type of work your electricians carry out. Domestic, commercial, and industrial environments present different risks, and training should reflect this. A plan built without reference to scope quickly becomes inefficient or incomplete. Where electricians are expected to certify work, work on live systems, or operate in client-controlled environments, training must support those responsibilities, and core regulatory knowledge is usually the starting point.
Step Two: Establish a baseline of core compliance training
A compliance training plan should identify the minimum level of knowledge required across your whole team, and then make sure everyone reaches or exceeds this level. This benchmark is typically centred on current wiring regulations and safe working practices. Refresher training on the 18th Edition Wiring Regulations is commonly used as part of this baseline, particularly where multiple electricians are signing off work under the same business.
Step Three: Match training to actual responsibilities
An effective compliance planning strategy avoids blanket training. Instead, it links courses directly to what individuals are expected to do. Where your electricians are responsible for inspecting and testing equipment, this competence must be current and demonstrable. Including City and Guilds 2391 Inspection and Testing Inspection and Testing and City & Guilds 2377 – Portable Appliance Testing within your training plan guarantees that inspections and testing are carried out in line with recognised industry standards and documented accordingly.
Step Four: Address higher-risk activities separately
A compliance training plan should identify work that carries a higher level of risk and address it explicitly, as commercial and industrial sites often introduce hazards that are not present in domestic work. Your training strategy should reflect this difference. Specialist safety training, such as arc flash hazard awareness, can be included where individual electricians are working on or near higher-energy systems. This demonstrates that risk has been assessed and managed, rather than assumed.
Step Five: Plan for review, refresh, and evidence
Compliance training is not static, so your training plan should also include regular review points to confirm that your team’s competence remains current and appropriate. This may involve refresher courses for the whole team or individuals, updates when regulations change, or additional training when your scope of work expands. Maintaining clear records of your training decisions and attendance is another key part of the planning process, demonstrating that competence has been considered, maintained, and reviewed over time.
What next?
For help building a personalised, compliance-led training programme for your electrical team, please contact one of our training advisors today by clicking here, or call us on 01442 501330.
