Skip to main content
Integrity Lift Compliance

Sector — Social Housing

Lift Inspections for Housing Associations & Councils

A social landlord's lifts are spread across general-needs blocks, sheltered and supported schemes and tenants' homes: communal passenger lifts, platform lifts, stairlifts, through-floor lifts and hoists. We examine them independently, send each report the same day with photographs, and keep every item's next-due date on one record, so no communal lift is missed when the year-end lift safety figure is counted.

Call Office, 07496 873972Email Office
26+ Years Hands-On Engineering Experience
Independent of Maintenance Contracts
7 Days a Week, 6am to 6pm
Same-Day Reports, With Photos

Certificate expired or lift out of compliance? You're exposed to enforcement action, and your insurance may not respond, until it's resolved. What to do.

Call Office, 07496 873972

What Makes This Sector Different

The compliance pressures specific to housing associations and councils

Your lift safety figure counts every communal lift

The Regulator of Social Housing's tenant satisfaction measure BS05 is the proportion of homes in buildings with communal passenger lifts where every required LOLER examination has been carried out and recorded, and larger landlords report it to the regulator each year. A single missing report counts against every home in that building. We keep each lift's record and next-due date and remind you before it falls due, so the year-end figure is a count rather than a search.

Adaptations in tenants' homes are a grey area

Stairlifts, through-floor lifts and hoists installed in tenants' homes are there for the tenant's own use, which points away from LOLER. But the landlord usually keeps ownership and responsibility, and paid carers using the equipment strengthen the case for LOLER. Practice varies between landlords; six-monthly examination is the safe course and the easiest to defend. We put adaptations on the same record as the communal lifts.

Sheltered schemes are workplaces too

In sheltered and supported housing, staff, carers and contractors use the scheme's lifts, stairlifts and hoists at work, and the scheme operator controls them, so LOLER applies and each item needs examining at least every six months. Slings are examined as separate accessories. Mark is enhanced DBS checked, which matters when the visit is in a scheme or a tenant's home.

Equipment We Examine

Typical Social Housing Plant

Also inspected for housing associations and councils: Goods Lift Inspections · BMU & Cradle Inspections

Our Experience Here

Why we say this

Housing associations and councils are part of Mark's 26+ years of lift engineering experience.

Who enforces here

HSE or the local authority, depending on how the Enforcing Authority Regulations apply to the building, but a social landlord doesn't send either of them its lift reports. The examiner notifies the authority only of a defect involving an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury. A landlord answers for its lifts to the Regulator of Social Housing, through the Safety and Quality Standard and the BS05 measure.

Talk to the engineer, not a call handler

Every survey is scoped by an engineer who has worked on this class of plant. If your question is whether a particular machine falls under LOLER, PUWER or both, that is a conversation worth having before you book anything.

Call 07496 873972

Further reading for housing associations and councils

LOLER Grey Areas: When Does LOLER Apply?
LOLER covers lifting equipment used at work, and most cases are clear: a lift in an office, a hoist in a care home. The grey areas are equipment in someone's home, equipment one organisation supplies and another's staff use, and lifts that only residents, the public or volunteers ride. For each, this guide sets out where the line sits, what HSE says, and the safe course where the law is unsettled. It also clears up a common mix-up over what counts as lifting equipment.
Does a Lift in a Block of Flats Need LOLER?
Yes, in almost every block, and it is a duty many blocks miss. A lift in the common parts is lifting equipment that people use at work, so LOLER applies to whoever controls it, and because it carries people it needs a thorough examination by a competent person at least every six months. A maintenance contract does not count as that examination unless it includes one.
Does LOLER Apply to a Stairlift in a Private Home?
For most householders the answer is no, and nobody tells them so. LOLER covers lifting equipment provided for use at work. A stairlift a homeowner bought for their own use is not work equipment, and HSE's guidance is that the householder has no LOLER duties even when visiting carers use it. What changes the answer is who supplied it, and for whom.

Trusted by Critical Estates

Independent. Defensible. Genuinely Endorsed.

SAFed-aligned defect classification, and the endorsement below is a genuine NHS Trust quote — not stock marketing copy.

NHS
NHS
Critical estate passenger lift compliance experience
SK
Skanska
Construction & engineering compliance support
A·B·C
SAFed-Aligned Defect Grading
Defects graded A, B or C to the published SAFed severity scale — a grading standard we follow, not a membership we hold
DBS
Enhanced DBS
Director Mark Crowley holds an enhanced DBS check
NHS Trust Endorsement
“Exceptional response times and thorough documentation. Managing compliance across multiple critical medical estates is complex, but their team makes statutory lift auditing seamless.”
Phillip Nai
Critical Healthcare Estates Manager
Barts Health NHS Trust

Common Questions

Housing Associations & Councils — Common Questions

Do communal lifts in social housing need LOLER inspections?

Yes, in almost every block. Cleaners, caretakers and contractors use them at work, and the landlord controls them, so each communal passenger lift needs a thorough examination by a competent person at least every six months. Even where nobody works in the building, the landlord must still keep the lift safe, and the six-monthly examination is the accepted way to show it.

What does the BS05 lift safety measure count?

It is one of the Regulator of Social Housing's tenant satisfaction measures: the proportion of homes in buildings with communal passenger lifts where every LOLER examination required for those lifts has been carried out and recorded at year end. A building only counts if every lift in it is covered.

Do housing associations report lift inspections to HSE or the council?

No. The reports stay with the landlord as its record. The examiner, not the landlord, sends a copy to the enforcing authority, and only where a defect involves an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury. Larger landlords report their BS05 lift figure to the Regulator of Social Housing instead. Incidents are separate: a lift accident or a failure of its load-bearing parts can be reportable under RIDDOR.

Do stairlifts and through-floor lifts in tenants' homes need LOLER?

It is not settled. They are installed for the tenant's own use, which points away from LOLER, but the landlord usually keeps responsibility for them and still has a general duty not to put the tenant at risk. Some landlords examine them every six months and others service them once a year. Where ownership has passed to the tenant, as with some grant-funded stairlifts, maintaining it may fall to the tenant instead.

Do firefighting lifts in tower blocks need more than LOLER?

Yes. In England, a residential building at least 18 metres or seven storeys high needs monthly checks of any firefighting or evacuation lift under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, with a fault that cannot be fixed within 24 hours reported to the fire and rescue service. Those checks sit alongside the six-monthly LOLER examination; they do not replace it.

Do you carry out LOLER inspections for housing associations and councils?

Yes. Housing associations and councils are part of Mark's 26+ years of lift engineering experience. We examine the classes of plant listed on this page, and every survey is scoped by an engineer with a background in that equipment.

Your lift safety figure counts every communal lift — what does that mean in practice?

The Regulator of Social Housing's tenant satisfaction measure BS05 is the proportion of homes in buildings with communal passenger lifts where every required LOLER examination has been carried out and recorded, and larger landlords report it to the regulator each year. A single missing report counts against every home in that building. We keep each lift's record and next-due date and remind you before it falls due, so the year-end figure is a count rather than a search.

Adaptations in tenants' homes are a grey area — what does that mean in practice?

Stairlifts, through-floor lifts and hoists installed in tenants' homes are there for the tenant's own use, which points away from LOLER. But the landlord usually keeps ownership and responsibility, and paid carers using the equipment strengthen the case for LOLER. Practice varies between landlords; six-monthly examination is the safe course and the easiest to defend. We put adaptations on the same record as the communal lifts.

Sheltered schemes are workplaces too — what does that mean in practice?

In sheltered and supported housing, staff, carers and contractors use the scheme's lifts, stairlifts and hoists at work, and the scheme operator controls them, so LOLER applies and each item needs examining at least every six months. Slings are examined as separate accessories. Mark is enhanced DBS checked, which matters when the visit is in a scheme or a tenant's home.

Are you independent of maintenance contractors?

Yes. We do not sell maintenance, repairs, spares or replacement plant, so a defect recorded in a Report of Thorough Examination is never a quotation in disguise. For a duty-holder presenting compliance evidence to an insurer, a client or a regulator, that separation is worth being able to state plainly.

Request a Social Housing Compliance Survey

Tell us what you have and where. We'll reply within one business hour, and you'll deal with an engineer familiar with housing associations and councils.

Already have an asset list or examination schedule? Email it to info@integrityliftcompliance.co.uk and we'll come back with a survey plan rather than ask you to retype it.

Survey Request Form