| Equipment | Interval | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Passenger lift | 6 months | Carries people |
| Platform lift and stairlift | 6 months | Carries a person, whatever the travel height |
| Patient and bath hoist | 6 months | Lifts people |
| MEWP or cherry picker | 6 months | Lifts people to height, hired machines included |
| BMU cradle and façade access | 6 months | Carries people over the edge of a building |
| Slings, chains, eyebolts, shackles | 6 months | Lifting accessories, named separately in Regulation 9(3) |
| Goods-only lift | 12 months | Goods only, with nobody riding in it |
| Dumbwaiter and service lift | 12 months | Goods only |
| Forklift truck | 12 months | Unless fitted to lift a person, which makes it 6 |
| Telehandler | 12 months | Unless fitted with a work platform, which makes it 6 |
| Crane and overhead travelling crane | 12 months | Goods only |
| Garage and vehicle lift | 6 months (HSE) | LOLER's default is 12, but HSE recommends six because people work beneath it |
What are the default intervals?
LOLER 1998 Regulation 9(3) sets two periods and nothing in between. Equipment used for lifting persons, and lifting accessories of any kind, must be thoroughly examined at least every six months. All other lifting equipment must be examined at least every twelve months. The alternative to both is an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person, which replaces the default rather than extending it. Note the words at least: these are maximum intervals, not targets, and nothing stops a duty-holder examining more often where the duty cycle or the environment justifies it.
Why six months for some equipment and twelve for others?
The split is about what happens when the equipment fails. A goods lift that drops its load damages stock. A passenger lift that drops does something else entirely, and so does a MEWP, a patient hoist or a cradle hanging off a roof. Lifting accessories sit in the six-month limb for a different reason: a sling or a chain is handled, dragged, stored badly and used across multiple machines, so it deteriorates faster than the plant it is attached to and is far easier to swap without anyone recording it. If you know which of those two descriptions your equipment fits, you can work out the interval without looking it up.
Which interval applies to my equipment?
The table below covers the equipment classes that come up most often. The deciding question for anything not listed is simple: does a person ride on it or is it a lifting accessory? If yes, six months. If no, twelve. Two cases catch people out. A forklift is twelve-monthly as a truck, but fit a man-cage or work platform and it becomes equipment for lifting persons at six. And the chains and slings used with a crane are accessories at six months even though the crane itself is at twelve, so one machine can carry two different due dates.
Does equipment need examining before it is first used?
Yes, and this one sits outside the periodic cycle entirely. Regulation 9(1) requires a thorough examination before lifting equipment is put into service for the first time, unless it has not been used before and you hold a declaration of conformity made not more than twelve months earlier, or it has come from another business accompanied by physical evidence of its last thorough examination. Regulation 9(2) goes further for equipment whose safety depends on how it was installed: it must be examined after installation and before first use, and again after it is assembled at a new site or location. That second limb catches relocated plant as well as new purchases, which is the part people miss when equipment moves between their own sites.
What counts as an exceptional circumstance?
Regulation 9 also requires a thorough examination each time exceptional circumstances occur that are liable to jeopardise the safety of the equipment. In practice that means damage or an impact, a major modification or repair, a failure in service, a long period standing idle, or exposure to conditions the equipment was not specified for. There is no list in the regulations, which is deliberate. The test is whether something has happened that could have affected the equipment's integrity, and the honest way to apply it is to ask whether you would be comfortable explaining the decision not to examine.
Can a written scheme of examination change the interval?
It can, in both directions, which is the point people tend to forget. A competent person can draw up an examination scheme that sets intervals based on the equipment's actual risk profile, duty cycle and environment. For a high-duty crane in a foundry that may mean examining more often than twelve months; for lightly used plant in a benign environment it may justify less often. The scheme has to be prepared by a competent person, should be written down and reviewed, and replaces the default interval rather than sitting alongside it. A verbal assurance that your equipment is on a scheme is not a scheme.
When does the clock actually start?
From the date of the thorough examination itself, not the date the certificate was issued, not the date you received it and not the date you paid for it. Schedule 1 requires the report to state the date by which the next thorough examination is due, so the answer should be printed on the document rather than calculated by you. If it is not on there, you are missing part of what the report is legally required to contain. Where a report arrives weeks after the visit, the due date still runs from the examination, so the delay eats into your next cycle rather than extending it.
Does a service or maintenance visit reset the interval?
No. This is the single most common misunderstanding about LOLER intervals, and it is an expensive one. Maintenance and thorough examination are different activities with different purposes and different legal bases: maintenance under PUWER keeps the equipment working, while thorough examination under LOLER establishes independently whether it is safe to continue in use. A lift can be serviced every quarter and still be overdue for examination. If your records show service visits and no reports of thorough examination, the examinations have not been done, whatever the visit sheets say.
What if the equipment is barely used or has been standing?
The interval runs on the calendar, not on hours of use. Equipment that has sat unused for six months is still due at six months, and low usage does not pause the clock. In fact a long idle period is itself one of the exceptional circumstances that can trigger an examination in its own right, because seals dry out, ropes and chains corrode and brakes seize. Equipment coming back into service after an extended stand is the case where duty-holders most often assume they have time in hand and most often do not.
Who is responsible when equipment is hired in?
The duty sits with whoever has control of the equipment in use, which on a hired MEWP or a leased lift usually means you rather than the hire company. Hire companies normally supply a current report with the machine, and you should ask for it and check its date before the machine is used rather than after. A machine arriving on site with no report, or with one that expires mid-hire, is your problem the moment it is put to work.
What happens if the date passes?
The equipment should not be used until it has been thoroughly examined. There is no grace period written into the regulations and no provision for running on while an examination is arranged. The practical consequences — being unable to produce current certification for a client, a funder or an insurer, and the record of a lapse following you into the next renewal — tend to arrive sooner than any visit from an inspector.
Sources & Further Reading
- Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/2307), Regulation 9 (opens in a new tab)
- LOLER 1998, Schedule 1 — information to be contained in a report of thorough examination (opens in a new tab)
- HSE — Thorough examinations of lifting equipment (opens in a new tab)
- HSE L113 — Safe use of lifting equipment (ACOP and guidance) (opens in a new tab)
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