Skip to main content
Integrity Lift Compliance
Knowledge Base

Does My Insurer Carry Out the LOLER Inspection?

Sometimes, and sometimes not — which is why this is the assumption that catches duty-holders out most often. Engineering insurance in the UK has long been sold alongside engineer surveying, so a great many businesses do receive statutory thorough examinations arranged through their insurer, and those examinations are usually perfectly sound. The problem is that nothing makes it automatic. Being insured is not the same as having a current Report of Thorough Examination, and the only way to know which you have is to look at the document.

Written and reviewed by Mark Crowley, Director, Integrity Lift Compliance Ltd — 26+ years hands-on lifting equipment engineering — NHS, commercial and industrial estates

Does being insured mean the examination is done?

No. Insurance and statutory examination are two separate things that are often bought from the same place. A policy transfers the financial consequence of a failure; a thorough examination is a legal duty to check the equipment is safe to keep using. One does not discharge the other. Plenty of insured businesses have lifting equipment that has never been examined, and plenty of examined equipment is uninsured. If your plant is examined through an insurer-arranged programme, that is an arrangement you have, not something the policy guarantees on its own.

What does LOLER say about who appoints the examiner?

Nothing about insurers either way. Regulation 9 of LOLER 1998 requires lifting equipment to be thoroughly examined by a competent person at the relevant interval. It defines the duty and the interval, not who employs the examiner or who arranges the visit. So an insurer-appointed engineer surveyor can satisfy Regulation 9 completely, and so can an independent one, and so — with care over impartiality — can a maintenance provider. The regulation is indifferent to the commercial route. What it is not indifferent to is whether the examination happened.

Is an insurance survey the same as a thorough examination?

Not necessarily, and this is the distinction worth being clear on. An insurer may send an engineer to survey plant in order to understand the risk it is underwriting — what the equipment is, how it is used, what condition it appears to be in. That is a commercial assessment for the insurer's benefit. A thorough examination is a statutory examination carried out for the duty-holder's benefit, which produces a Report of Thorough Examination with the particulars LOLER requires. The two visits can look similar from the outside and produce very different documents. Some insurers provide both; some provide only the first.

How do I tell what I have actually been given?

Read the document rather than the covering letter. A Report of Thorough Examination should identify the equipment, state that a thorough examination under LOLER has been carried out, name the competent person who carried it out, record the date of the examination and the date by which the next one is due, and set out any defect found along with the timescale for putting it right. If what you hold is a survey letter, a risk report, a schedule of insured plant, or a certificate with no examiner named and no next-due date, you do not yet have evidence that Regulation 9 has been satisfied. Ask the question in writing and keep the reply.

Where do insurer-arranged programmes leave gaps?

Usually in scope rather than in quality. An insurer-arranged programme examines the plant that appears on the policy schedule, and schedules go out of date. Equipment bought since the last renewal, plant hired in for a project, a lift inherited with a new building, and above all lifting accessories — slings, chains, shackles, eyebolts — are the items most often absent. Accessories are also the shortest-interval items at six months, so a gap there opens quickly. Reconciling what is examined against what you actually operate is a worthwhile exercise whoever carries out the work, and it is where most overdue equipment is found.

Can I appoint my own competent person instead?

Yes. Nothing in LOLER ties the examination to your insurer, and you are free to appoint whoever you judge competent. Some duty-holders do so because they want the examination separated from any commercial interest in the outcome; some because an insurer-arranged cycle does not fit their operating pattern; some simply because the scope was not complete. If you do change, tell your insurer and keep the reports, because the policy may require evidence that statutory examinations are current regardless of who performs them. Check your own policy wording on that point rather than assuming either way.

Who carries the risk if the examination was never done?

You do, as duty-holder. The duty under Regulation 9 cannot be contracted out, delegated away or absorbed by a policy. If equipment fails and no current report exists, an HSE or local authority inspector will ask the duty-holder how they satisfied themselves the examination was in place — and an insurer may ask the same question before paying a claim, since a policy can require compliance with statutory duties as a condition. "We assumed the insurer did it" is a common answer and not a good one. Knowing which document you hold, and when the next examination falls due, is the whole of the protection here.

Sources & Further Reading

Need a LOLER inspection?

Independent inspection, same-day report with photos

We reply within one business hour, and the inspection is carried out by an engineer with hands-on experience of that kind of plant.

Request a SurveyOverdue inspection?

Need this doing rather than just understood?

Independent statutory examination across London, Kent and the South East. We sell no maintenance, repairs or parts, so a defect we record is never a quotation in disguise.

07496 873972Request an inspection
Already overdue? Next working day for an overdue passenger lift in London, same week across Kent and the South East — and what to do in the meantime.

Related Knowledge

Who Can Carry Out LOLER Inspections?
A competent person: someone with the practical and theoretical knowledge to find defects in that class of equipment and judge how much they matter, and who is independent enough to say so. LOLER names no qualification, no register and no licence, which puts the burden of judging competence on the duty-holder appointing them.
Read article
Can My Lift Company Carry Out the LOLER Inspection?
It is one of the most common questions duty-holders ask, and the honest answer is not a flat no. LOLER does not name a prohibited person. What it requires is a competent person, and HSE expects that person to be sufficiently independent and impartial to make objective decisions — which is where a maintenance provider examining its own work runs into difficulty. This is about the structure of the arrangement, not about anyone's honesty.
Read article
LOLER Certificate: What People Mean and What You Actually Get
Almost everyone calls it a LOLER certificate. LOLER 1998 never calls it that — the document is a Report of Thorough Examination. The distinction matters, because a 'certificate' implies a pass and a report does not.
Read article