Thorough Examination
The formal, in-depth inspection required under LOLER 1998 Regulation 9 — commonly (if informally) called a "LOLER inspection". More than a visual check: it covers structure, drive systems, safety devices and, where relevant, load testing.
Competent Person
The term LOLER uses for whoever carries out a Thorough Examination. HSE's guidance describes someone with the practical and theoretical knowledge and experience to detect defects and assess their significance, and who is independent enough to be impartial. This is why maintenance contractors examining their own installed equipment is generally discouraged.
Report of Thorough Examination (RoTE)
The signed, written document a competent person issues after a Thorough Examination, identifying the equipment, what was examined, any defects found and their severity, and the date the next examination is due.
Duty Holder
Industry shorthand for whoever LOLER places duties on: employers, the self-employed, and anyone with control of the lifting equipment or of how it is used, to the extent of that control. Usually the employer, building owner or managing agent, and not necessarily whoever owns the equipment or operates it day to day.
Examination Scheme
A written scheme, drawn up by a competent person, that sets out examination intervals and scope tailored to specific equipment — used where the default LOLER intervals (six or twelve months) don't fit the equipment's actual risk profile or duty cycle.
Safe Working Load (SWL)
The maximum load an item of lifting equipment or an accessory may lift in its particular conditions of use, as determined by a competent person — the figure LOLER requires to be marked on it. It can equal the manufacturer's rated capacity, or be lower. Exceeding it is one of the most common causes of serious lifting-equipment failure.
Notifiable Defect
A defect that poses an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury. Under LOLER 1998 Regulation 10, the competent person must tell the duty-holder straight away and send a copy of the report to the relevant enforcing authority — HSE or the local authority, depending on the premises — and the equipment must not be used until it is put right.
LOLER 1998
The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 — the UK statutory instrument requiring lifting equipment to be strong, stable, correctly positioned and periodically examined by a competent person.
PUWER 1998
The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 — broader than LOLER, covering the suitability, maintenance and safe use of all work equipment, lifting equipment included.
BS EN 81-20 / BS EN 81-50
The harmonised European standards governing the design, construction and component-verification methods for new lift installations, superseding the older EN 81-1/81-2 standards since 2017.
SAFed
The Safety Assessment Federation — the UK trade body for engineering inspection and examination, whose defect-classification categories (broadly: immediate risk, becoming dangerous, and minor) are widely used as the industry-standard way to grade findings in a Thorough Examination report.
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA)
The parent Act under which LOLER and PUWER are made. It carries the general duties — on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of employees and others affected by the work. LOLER tells you what to do about lifting equipment; HSWA is why you have to.
Regulation 8 (LOLER) — lifting operations
Requires every lifting operation to be properly planned by a competent person, appropriately supervised and carried out in a safe manner. It covers the lift itself rather than the equipment's condition, and it is the regulation most often forgotten when an examination programme is in place but nobody has planned the lift.
Regulation 9 (LOLER) — thorough examination
The duty to have lifting equipment thoroughly examined: before first use, unless it is new with a declaration of conformity made in the twelve months before it goes into service, or comes from another business with evidence of its last examination; after installation, and after assembly at a new site, where safety depends on the installation conditions; at six- or twelve-monthly intervals or in accordance with an examination scheme; and following exceptional circumstances liable to jeopardise safety.
Regulation 10 (LOLER) — reports and defects
Requires the competent person to make a written report of the thorough examination, to tell the duty-holder straight away of any defect that is or could become a danger to people, and — where a defect presents an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury — to send a copy of the report to the enforcing authority as well. It is the regulation that turns a finding into a formal, external obligation.
Regulation 11 (LOLER) — keeping of information
The record-keeping duty. Reports must be kept available for inspection: for periodic examinations, until the next report or for two years, whichever is later; for lifting accessories, at least two years; for first examinations of other equipment, for as long as it is in use. Keeping them longer is usually sensible, because a defect history is what demonstrates a pattern was managed.
Approved Code of Practice (ACOP)
Guidance with a special legal status. Following an ACOP is normally enough to show compliance with the regulation it covers. You may comply another way, but if you are prosecuted and it is proved you did not follow the ACOP, you will be found at fault unless you show you complied with the law in some other way. It is not optional in the way ordinary guidance is.
L113
HSE's publication combining the Approved Code of Practice and guidance for LOLER — the document that fleshes out what the regulations mean in practice, including what competence and independence are expected of the person carrying out a thorough examination.
Enforcing authority
Whoever can inspect your premises and take enforcement action. Allocated by the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998. HSE covers factories, construction and hospitals; the local authority's environmental health team covers most offices, shops, warehousing for retail and wholesale distribution, hotels and leisure. It is frequently assumed to be the HSE when it is the council.
Improvement notice
A formal notice requiring a contravention to be remedied within a stated period, not less than 21 days. Issued by an inspector under HSWA. It is a legal document, it is appealable, and on some registers it is public — which is why an overdue examination can become a procurement problem as well as a safety one.
Prohibition notice
A notice stopping an activity that involves a risk of serious personal injury. It can take effect immediately, and unlike an improvement notice it does not depend on a contravention having occurred — the risk is enough. For lifting equipment it typically means the plant does not move again until the matter is resolved.
Lifting equipment
Work equipment for lifting or lowering loads, including the attachments used to anchor, fix or support it. The breadth catches more than people expect: passenger lifts, patient hoists, forklifts, cranes, MEWPs, vehicle lifts, and the slings and shackles used with them.
Work equipment
PUWER's wider category — any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation for use at work. All lifting equipment is work equipment; most work equipment is not lifting equipment. That is why PUWER duties sit alongside LOLER ones rather than being replaced by them.
Inspection (PUWER) vs thorough examination (LOLER)
Not interchangeable, though the words get used as though they are. A PUWER inspection under Regulation 6 is a check appropriate to the risk, at intervals the duty-holder determines. A LOLER thorough examination is a specified statutory examination by a competent person at intervals the regulation sets. Buying one when you needed the other is a common and expensive error.
Pre-use check
The operator's own check at the start of a shift — controls, brakes, obvious damage, fluid levels. It is good practice and often required by the risk assessment, but it does not replace the inspections a risk assessment calls for under PUWER, and it is certainly not a thorough examination. It does not extend any interval.
Working Load Limit (WLL)
The maximum load an item of lifting equipment or an accessory is designed and certified by the manufacturer to carry. It is a fixed property of the item. Safe Working Load is the related but distinct figure the competent person considers safe in the actual configuration and conditions of use, which may be lower.
Proof load test
A test applying a load above the rated capacity to verify integrity, carried out where the competent person judges it necessary — typically after substantial repair, modification or replacement of a load-bearing part. Testing is not a routine part of every thorough examination, and a provider quoting for testing as standard is worth questioning.
UKCA and CE marking
Conformity markings showing equipment meets the applicable supply regulations — UKCA for Great Britain following EU exit, CE where it continues to be recognised. A marking relates to how the equipment was supplied; it says nothing about its condition today and is no substitute for a current Report of Thorough Examination.
PUWER Part IV — power presses
The part of PUWER setting specific duties for power presses and their guards, including thorough examination and inspection by a competent person, with the required frequency depending on the guarding arrangement. It is the one area where PUWER prescribes examination in a way closer to LOLER than to its usual risk-based approach.
Lifts Regulations 2016
The supply regulations for new lifts permanently serving buildings that travel faster than 0.15 m/s and carry persons, or goods in a car a person can enter and operate from inside — conformity assessment, the declaration of conformity, and UKCA or CE marking. They govern how a lift is placed on the market, not how it is looked after afterwards, which is LOLER and PUWER's job.
Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008
The UK machinery supply rules, implementing what is still universally called the Machinery Directive. Lifting equipment that falls outside the Lifts Regulations arrives this way — many goods-only lifts, most platform lifts and stairlifts (which travel at 0.15 m/s or less), service lifts and dumbwaiters.
Designated standard
A standard listed as giving a presumption of conformity with the supply regulations. Meeting it is not compulsory, but doing so is normally accepted as evidence the equipment meets the legal requirement, and departing from it means demonstrating conformity another way.
BS EN 81-28
The remote alarm standard for passenger and goods passenger lifts — two-way emergency communication between the car and someone able to respond, rather than a bell nobody is listening for.
BS EN 81-70
Accessibility to lifts for persons including persons with disability — car and landing dimensions, control heights and markings, audible and visual information. The design counterpart to the Equality Act duties that apply once a lift is in service.
BS EN 81-72
Firefighters lifts. The lift provided for fire and rescue service use within a firefighting shaft, specified to keep operating while a fire is being fought. Distinct from an evacuation lift, which exists to get occupants out.
BS EN 81-73
Behaviour of lifts in the event of fire — normally recall to a designated landing and shutdown, so that ordinary passenger lifts are taken out of use rather than being used to escape.
BS EN 81-80
The method for assessing and improving the safety of existing lifts, often called the safety norm for existing lifts. It ranks shortfalls against modern expectations by risk, which gives an older installation an affordable order of priority rather than a demand to rebuild to current design standards.
BS EN 81-40 / 81-41
Stairlifts and inclined lifting platforms (81-40) and vertical lifting platforms (81-41) for persons with impaired mobility. Both types carry people, so in use they sit on the six-monthly thorough examination interval.
Evacuation lift
A lift provided to evacuate occupants who cannot use stairs, under a managed procedure, with its own protected power supply. Frequently confused with a firefighters lift, which serves the fire and rescue service rather than the people leaving.
Lifting Accessory
Equipment used to attach a load to lifting machinery but not fixed to it — slings, chains, shackles and eyebolts are the common examples. LOLER requires these to be examined every six months, the same interval as equipment lifting people.
Sources & Further Reading
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.