How to check an electrician licence in Victoria

Who issues it, and where to search

Victoria splits this differently from most states: electrical licensing sits with Energy Safe Victoria, not with the building regulator. If you start at the Building and Plumbing Commission to check a sparky, you are on the wrong site.

How to check it, in order

1. 1Ask for the licence number and the exact name it is held under. It is often a company rather than the person standing in front of you, and the register searches on the name it was issued to.
2. 2Search the Energy Safe Victoria public register yourself. A photograph of a card proves that a licence once existed, not that it is current.
3. 3Check the class or category covers this work. A licence that is valid for one kind of work is not a licence for another, and that is the gap that most often matters.
4. 4Check the expiry date and any conditions or disciplinary history recorded against it.
5. 5Confirm the ABN on the quote matches the entity named on the licence, using ABN Lookup. A mismatch between who is licensed and who you are contracting with is worth asking about before you pay a deposit.

What the licence covers

Fixed electrical wiring: anything connected to the mains that is not simply plugged in. Installing or replacing a power point, a switch, a light fitting, a circuit or a switchboard is all licensed work.

What you can legally do yourself

Effectively nothing. Australia is unusual internationally in having no do-it-yourself exemption for fixed wiring in any state or territory. Changing a lamp in an existing fitting and plugging in an appliance are the practical limits, and resetting a circuit breaker once is fine. Resetting it twice is a fault report, not a nuisance.