Are cheap electricians worth it?
Usually not, because electrical corner-cutting is invisible on handover day: skipped testing, missing certification and undersized work all function perfectly until they fail. The gap between the cheapest quote and a fair one is small money against a trade where the failure mode includes fire.
The uncomfortable mechanics: electrical work rewards corner-cutting in the short term. An uncertified board swap powers the house identically to a certified one; an untested circuit alteration works the day it is made; the difference lives in what happens under fault conditions, years later, when nobody remembers who did the work.
Where cheap quotes actually save their money, in practice: skipping the full testing that certification requires, sharing RCDs instead of fitting per-circuit protection, reusing tired cable that should have been replaced, and leaving Part P notification undone, which surfaces at house sale when the buyer's solicitor asks for certificates that do not exist.
The sale-day problem is the quantifiable one: missing electrical certification triggers indemnity insurance, retrospective testing or price negotiation, and any of those costs more than the original saving. An EICR on uncertified work is the retrospective fix, and it frequently finds exactly what the low price paid for.
None of this means expensive equals good. It means the price floor is real: below a certain number, the testing and paperwork cannot be in the price. Judge quotes on scope, certification and answers to direct questions, then let price separate honest competitors.
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