Is it safe to use extension leads permanently?
As a permanent arrangement, no: extension leads are designed for temporary use, and the classic failure modes, daisy-chaining, overloading with heaters, trailing under carpets, cause a steady share of UK house fires. A house that cannot function without permanent extension leads has a socket-provision problem, which is a cheap fix by comparison.
The physics of the risk: a standard extension lead carries 13 amps at most, shared across everything plugged into it. High-draw appliances (heaters, kettles, tumble driers, anything that makes heat) can take most of that alone, and the lead's cable, often thinner than fixed wiring and coiled or covered, sheds its heat badly. Warmth is the warning; melting is the escalation.
The specific behaviours that turn convenience into hazard: plugging one extension into another (each junction adds resistance and failure points), running leads under carpets or through door pinches where damage goes unseen, and the reel-style lead used while coiled, which is a heater with the wrong badge.
Sensible temporary use is fine, that is what they are for: light loads, visible routing, one lead per socket, uncoiled reels. Christmas lights through January will not burn the house down. The word doing the work is temporary.
The structural fix is embarrassingly cheap relative to the workaround: sockets where life actually happens (£110 to £180 each, less in batches) end the extension economy at its source. If your bedroom, desk or TV corner runs on strips, that is the list to send us.
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