Updated 30 July 2026
RAMS template for a consumer unit replacement
Who breaks the supply, and how long the occupier is without it. Fourteen steps for a board change, written to be pasted into your own document.
Pre-filled Word document
Consumer unit RAMS — £29
Eight task-specific hazard rows and fourteen board-change steps. No subscription.
- Supply isolation and sealed cut-out boundary
- Occupier outage and essential-load controls
- Dead tests, energisation and live tests in order
- Editable site fields, risk scores and sign-off
Delivered as .docx after payment. Complete the site fields and get competent-person approval before issue.
Method statement — sequence14 steps
- Survey first: record the earthing arrangement, the tails and main earthing conductor sizes, and the state of the main bonding, before anything is quoted or ordered.
- Record the remedial work the survey finds. A board change does not fix undersized bonding, and the certificate will say so.
- Fix the notification route before the day. Registered on a scheme, you certify the work and the scheme notifies afterwards. Not registered, the building notice goes in before you start.
- Book the supply isolation with the distributor or meter operator. Withdrawing the sealed cut-out fuse is not a step in this method statement.
- Agree the outage window with the occupier in writing. Ask about freezers, medical equipment, care visits and anyone working from home that day.
- Identify and label every circuit at the old board, and photograph the existing connections before disconnecting anything.
- Barrier and sign the working area. Add task lighting: the terminals have to be seen, and the room lights are on the board being removed.
- Isolate at the agreed point, lock off, and keep the key. Fit a warning notice at the point of isolation.
- Prove the tester on a known live source, prove every conductor dead at the point of work, then prove the tester again.
- Treat the meter tails as live throughout. They stay energised while the cut-out fuse is in.
- Remove the old unit, install and terminate the new one to the manufacturer's torque figures, and re-terminate the tails.
- Dead tests before energising: continuity, insulation resistance and polarity, recorded as you go.
- Energise, then the live tests: earth fault loop impedance, prospective fault current and every RCD or RCBO.
- Issue the certificate, label the board, walk the occupier through the new arrangement, and lodge the certificate with your scheme.
Paste into your own document and edit every line.
What does a reviewer check on a board change?
| Question | What the provision says | Where |
|---|---|---|
| QuestionWhose is the cut-out fuse? | What the provision saysThe distributor's or the meter operator's. Their duty covers equipment “on a consumer's premises but … not under the control of the consumer”, and the cut-out fuse is to be “enclosed in a locked or sealed container as appropriate”. | WhereESQCR 2002, reg 24(1) and 24(2) |
| QuestionWhose consent does the work need? | What the provision says“No person shall make or alter a connection from a distributor's network to a consumer's installation … without that distributor's consent, unless such consent has been unreasonably withheld”. | WhereESQCR 2002, reg 25(1) |
| QuestionWhat counts as isolation? | What the provision says“Disconnection and separation of the electrical equipment from every source of electrical energy in such a way that this disconnection and separation is secure”. | WhereEAWR 1989, reg 12(2) |
| QuestionWhat keeps it dead while you work? | What the provision says“Adequate precautions shall be taken to prevent electrical equipment, which has been made dead … from becoming electrically charged during that work if danger may thereby arise”. | WhereEAWR 1989, reg 13 |
| QuestionIs the board change notifiable? | What the provision saysIn England reg 12(6A)(b) names it: “the replacement of a consumer unit”. So a building notice is required, unless reg 12(6)(a) takes it out — a person registered for “fixed low or extra-low voltage electrical installations in dwellings” certifies instead. | WhereBuilding Regs 2010, reg 12(6A)(b) and Sch 3 item 8 |
Reg 12(6A) is inserted for England only: the Wales version of reg 12 shows it omitted. Check the Welsh route before writing a notification line for a job in Wales.