Who Can Carry Out LOLER Inspections?

What does LOLER actually require of the person?

Regulation 9 requires the thorough examination to be carried out by a competent person. That is the whole of the statutory requirement as to who. The regulations name no qualification, no licence, no register and no professional body. What they do require, in Schedule 1, is that the report records the name, address and qualifications of the person making it — so whatever qualifications exist are written down and attributable, even though none in particular are mandated. The absence of a prescribed credential is not an oversight. It reflects the range of equipment LOLER covers, from a nylon sling to a façade access cradle, where no single qualification could sensibly span the lot.

How does HSE define a competent person?

HSE guidance sets the standard in two halves. The first is knowledge: the person should have such practical and theoretical knowledge and experience of the lifting equipment being examined as will enable them to detect defects or weaknesses, and to assess their importance in relation to the safety and continued use of that equipment. The second is position: they should be sufficiently independent and impartial that objective decisions can be made. Both halves are required. Someone who knows the plant intimately but cannot afford to condemn it does not meet the standard, and neither does someone impeccably independent who has never seen that class of equipment before.

Is there a licence or a register you have to be on?

No. There is no LOLER licence, no statutory register of examiners and no government-issued card. Anyone claiming to be licensed under LOLER is describing something that does not exist. That matters in both directions: it means a provider cannot wave a licence number at you as proof, and it means you cannot discharge your own duty by checking one. The absence of a register is precisely why the duty-holder is left having to form a view about competence directly.

What does practical and theoretical knowledge mean in practice?

It means knowing how that specific class of equipment fails, not engineering in general. The failure modes of a passenger lift — rope deterioration, brake wear, overspeed governor behaviour, door protection — have very little in common with those of a chain sling, a dock leveller or a power press. An examiner competent on one is not automatically competent on another, and a competent person is competent for particular equipment rather than competent in the abstract. If you hold mixed plant, the honest question is not whether the examiner is competent, but which of your assets they are competent to examine.

Why does independence form part of competence?

Because an examination is only worth what the examiner is free to write in it. Where the organisation that maintains the equipment also examines it, the same body judges its own maintenance, records any defect, and quotes to put it right — a position in which a finding and a sales opportunity are the same document. It is not automatically unlawful and some large maintenance companies run a genuinely separated examination function. But it is the question most worth asking, and it has an article of its own.

Can an in-house engineer carry out the examination?

In principle yes, and for large estates it can be a sound arrangement. Nothing in LOLER requires the competent person to be external. What HSE's guidance does require is that both halves of the test are met: the individual has the knowledge and experience for that equipment, and is sufficiently independent to make objective decisions. Independence here means structural separation rather than separate employment — an in-house examiner should not be the person who maintains the equipment, should not report to whoever is accountable for its availability, and needs genuine authority to take plant out of service. Where those conditions hold the arrangement works. Where the examiner and the maintainer are the same person wearing two hats, the test is not met whatever the job title says.

What credentials should a competent person hold?

LOLER prescribes none. What is worth asking about is a recognised engineering qualification relevant to the equipment, whether the employing organisation belongs to a trade body such as SAFed (the Safety Assessment Federation), and above all a track record of examining the same class of equipment.

What do those credentials actually tell you?

They are evidence worth having, and it is worth knowing what they evidence. Schemes and trade federations in this field accredit organisations and their quality systems — procedures, documentation, oversight — rather than certifying that the particular individual arriving at your site is competent on your particular plant. So they are a reasonable thing to ask about and a reasonable thing to weigh. They are not a substitute for the two questions competence actually turns on: does this person know how this class of equipment fails, and are they free to say so. Ask about the scheme, then ask about the person.

How do you check competence before appointing someone?

The table below sets out the six questions worth asking and what each one is really testing. They are ordinary procurement questions and a competent provider will answer them without hesitation. The most revealing is usually the last: ask what happens when they find equipment unsafe, and listen for whether the answer contains an actual example. Examiners who regularly take plant out of service have stories about it. Examiners who never find anything have a different kind of record.

What should make you walk away?

Some signals are worth treating as decisive rather than as negotiating points:

1. A certificate offered in place of a report. Schedule 1 sets out what a report must contain, and a one-page pass is not it.
2. Examination bundled invisibly into a maintenance visit, with no separate record of who examined what and when.
3. A claim to be licensed or registered under LOLER, which describes something that does not exist.
4. Reports across a whole portfolio that contain no defects at all. On real equipment that is not a sign of good maintenance.
5. Reluctance to say who will attend, or an answer that changes to whoever is in the area that day.
6. A report issued without the examiner having been in the plant room, on the roof, or wherever the equipment actually is.

Who is responsible for checking the person was competent?

You are. Appointing a competent person is part of the duty-holder's duty, not a step that transfers it, and the duty cannot be contracted away by buying an examination from someone. If equipment fails and the examination is questioned, the question put to you will not be whether a report existed. It will be what you did to satisfy yourself that the person who wrote it was competent to write it and free to write it honestly. That is an easier question to answer if the answer was written down before it was asked.