Is there a LOLER licence?
No, and nothing in the regulations creates one. There is no LOLER licence, no LOLER ticket, no LOLER card, no statutory certificate of competence and no government-maintained register of approved examiners. Anyone offering to show you their LOLER licence is showing you something they have named themselves. This catches people out because it is not how the rest of regulated work behaves — a gas engineer must by law be on the Gas Safe register before touching a gas appliance, so it is reasonable to assume lifting equipment works the same way. It does not.
What does LOLER actually require instead?
Regulation 9 requires the thorough examination to be carried out by a competent person. That is the whole of it — the regulation places the duty and names no qualification, no scheme and no accrediting body. The term competent person is not defined in LOLER either, which is the root of the confusion. The substance sits in HSE's guidance, which describes a competent person as having the practical and theoretical knowledge and experience to detect defects and weaknesses and to assess their significance, and as being sufficiently independent and impartial to make objective decisions.
So how do you judge whether someone is competent?
On three things, none of which is a certificate. Knowledge of the specific plant class in front of them — passenger lift experience does not make somebody competent on a BMU cradle, and the reverse is equally true. Experience of finding defects on that class of equipment and judging what they mean. And independence sufficient to record an inconvenient finding without it costing them anything. The duty to satisfy yourself on all three rests with you as duty-holder, which is uncomfortable, and is precisely why people would prefer a licence to exist.
Why has nobody created a LOLER licence?
Because the range is too wide for one qualification to mean anything. The same regulation covers a passenger lift, a tower crane, a patient hoist, a vacuum lifter and a sling, and the knowledge needed to examine each is largely separate. A single licence would either be so broad as to be worthless or would need to be dozens of separate endorsements — which is roughly what the trade qualifications are, without the force of law behind them. The regulation was written to put the judgement on the duty-holder and the competence on the examiner, rather than to maintain a list.
What should you ask instead of asking for a licence?
Four questions get you further than any certificate:
- What experience do you have on this specific class of equipment? Ask for the class, not the regulation.
- Who employs you, and does anybody in your organisation earn money from the remedial work you recommend?
- What happens if you condemn plant that colleagues of yours maintain, or that my contractor installed last month?
- Will I receive the Report of Thorough Examination itself, with the defects and timescales, rather than a certificate summarising it?
Sources & Further Reading
Independent inspection, same-day report with photos
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