BS 7671 Amendment 4 2026: What Electricians Need to Know

Right now, electricians’ forums are full of speculation about Amendment 4.

Training companies are already selling courses on regulations that haven’t been finalised. Trade magazines are publishing articles based on the Draft for Public Consultation that closed months ago. Everyone’s got an opinion. Most of them are guessing.

Gary Gundry isn’t guessing. He sits on the committee that wrote Amendment 4. He was in the room when these decisions were made. He was on the committees that shaped the 18th Edition, Amendments 1, 2, and 3.

So when we tell you what’s coming in Amendment 4, we’re not summarising someone else’s summary. We’re telling you what Gary knows.

This Is the Most Significant Amendment to BS 7671 in Years

Amendment 3 gave us one new regulation and two definitions. Useful, but hardly a page-turner.

Amendment 4 is different. Entirely new chapters. New sections covering technologies that didn’t exist when the 18th Edition was written. Updates across multiple parts of the regulations that will affect how you complete certificates.

If you’ve been coasting on your 18th Edition knowledge, this is the one that’ll make you pay attention.

What’s Covered in Amendment 4

New chapters:

Chapter 57 covers battery installations
Chapter 81 introduces energy efficiency

New sections:

Section 545 addresses earthing for ICT systems
Section 716 covers Power over Ethernet

Updates affecting your certificates:

EICR condition report notes rewritten
Signature requirements clarified
Chapter 65 periodic inspection clarifications
Medical location requirements enhanced
Firefighter’s switch guidance revised
Regulation 522.6 reorganised into a table
New appendix data for buried cables in ducts

We’ll cover each of these in detail in upcoming posts.

The Dates You Need to Know

Amendment 4 is published on 15 April 2026. You can start using it immediately.

The current version will be withdrawn six months later, around October 2026. After that point, you’ll need to be working on Amendment 4.

That six-month window gives you time to get familiar with the changes. But if you’re producing certificates in October on software that hasn’t updated, you’ve got a problem. The old version won’t exist any more. Your software needs to know that.