Reporting, Records and the Duties Around a Thorough Examination

When lifting equipment fails, who reports it?

Both of you, under different regulations, and this is the distinction that causes most of the trouble. The competent person who carries out the examination has a duty under LOLER Regulation 10 to notify the enforcing authority where a defect involves an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury — that duty is the examiner's, not yours, and it is discharged whether you like the finding or not. Separately, as the employer or duty-holder, you have your own duty under RIDDOR to report certain failures. Neither duty satisfies the other. A duty-holder who assumes the examiner has dealt with the reporting, and an examiner who assumes the duty-holder will, between them produce an unreported incident.

What counts as a reportable dangerous occurrence?

Under RIDDOR the category that matters for lifting equipment is the collapse, overturning or failure of a load-bearing part — and it is reportable whether or not anybody was hurt. That last point is the one people miss: a dangerous occurrence is reported because of what happened to the equipment, not because of what happened to a person. Accessories for lifting are treated differently from the equipment itself, so a failed sling and a failed crane are not the same question. If you are weighing whether something is reportable, the test to apply is what failed and whether it was load-bearing, not how lucky everybody was.

What must the Report of Thorough Examination contain?

LOLER sets out the particulars in a schedule, and knowing them is how a duty-holder tells a real report from a certificate with a logo on it. A report should give you:

1. The employer for whom the examination was made, and the address of the premises where it was carried out.
2. Enough detail to identify the equipment itself, including its date of manufacture where that is known.
3. The date of the last thorough examination, and the safe working load — or, where that depends on configuration, the load for the configuration examined.
4. Which kind of examination it was: a first examination after installation or assembly, one at a statutory interval, one under a written scheme, or one following exceptional circumstances.
5. Any part found to have a defect that is or could become a danger, described rather than merely noted.
6. What repair, renewal or alteration is needed to put each defect right.
7. For a defect that is not yet dangerous but could become so, the time by which it could become a danger.
8. The latest date by which the next thorough examination must be carried out.
9. Particulars of any testing carried out as part of the examination.
10. The date of the examination, and the name, address and qualifications of the person who made it — along with who employs them.

How do I tell a report from a certificate?

Hold what you were given against that list. A document with no named competent person, no next-due date, no description of defects and no repair timescales is not doing the job a report does, whatever it is titled. The regulations call the document a report, not a certificate, and the parts a certificate most often leaves out — the defects, the timescales, the qualifications of whoever signed it — are precisely the parts you would need if anybody ever asked how you satisfied yourself the equipment was safe.

How long do you keep it?

Long enough to show an unbroken history, which in practice means longer than the minimum. The regulations require each periodic report to be kept until the next one is made or for two years, whichever is later, so for equipment on a six-monthly cycle you should always hold at least the last two years of reports. Keeping only the latest report leaves you able to prove today and unable to prove last year, which is the wrong way round — the question after an incident is almost always about history rather than about the present.

Where do the Work at Height Regulations come in?

Alongside LOLER, not instead of it, and on more equipment than people expect. A MEWP is lifting equipment under LOLER and it is also work equipment for work at height, so both sets of duties apply to the same machine at the same time. The same is true of a BMU cradle, and of work in a lift shaft or pit. LOLER governs the condition of the equipment and the planning of the lifting operation; the Work at Height Regulations govern the decision to work at height at all, the selection of equipment, and the inspection of that equipment and of the place of work. A current thorough examination on a scissor lift says nothing about whether the work it is being used for was properly planned.

Does any of this move the duty off the duty-holder?

No, and that is worth stating plainly because each of these duties involves somebody else doing something. The examiner reports a dangerous defect. The enforcing authority receives it. The report is written by a competent person you did not employ until you engaged them. None of that transfers the underlying duty, which stays with whoever has control of the equipment. What the other duties do is create a record of whether you met yours.