Sectors

Lifting Equipment Health & Safety Compliance

LOLER and PUWER thorough examination, statutory certification and planned maintenance for the people accountable for lifting safety. Supporting compliance across the UK and Ireland, including the requirements of S.I. No. 299 of 2007 in Ireland. Over 400,000 statutory examinations a year, with every report delivered online.

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Where the Lifting Safety Duty Actually Sits

Health and safety is not an industry. It is the duty that runs underneath all of them, and in lifting that duty is unusually specific. If your organisation provides lifting equipment for use at work, or has control over how it is used, the law makes you responsible for proving that equipment is suitable, examined and safe to put back into service. Not the manufacturer. Not the maintenance contractor.

That responsibility cannot be transferred by contract. A supplier can carry out the LOLER thorough examination, issue the report and recommend the remedial work, but the decision to keep an asset in service — and the record that justifies it — stays with the employer or the person in control of the equipment. Which is why the practical question for most health and safety teams is not whether they are compliant. It is whether they could evidence it this afternoon, for every asset, on every site.

WH Scott Group has worked in lifting and engineering since 1897 and now completes more than 400,000 statutory examinations a year across the UK and Ireland. WH Scott, Re-Ropes and Metlab together cover statutory inspection and certification, crane and hoist maintenance, lift and rope services, and accredited engineering inspection and NDT — so a single asset register can be surveyed, examined, certified and repaired under one contract rather than four.

Key Health & Safety Challenges in Lifting Operations

The asset register is the real risk, not the lift. Equipment that is not on the register does not get examined, and the equipment that falls off the register is rarely the overhead crane. It is the sling bought on a purchase card, the chain block inherited with a building, the beam clamp a contractor left behind, the hoist in a plant room nobody visits. Under LOLER, lifting accessories need thorough examination at intervals not exceeding six months — the same frequency as equipment that lifts people. They are also the cheapest, smallest and most portable items on site, which is exactly why they go missing from the record.

Servicing is not statutory examination, and inspection is not thorough examination. These are the two most expensive misunderstandings in lifting compliance. A service visit adjusts brakes, lubricates ropes and keeps a crane running. A thorough examination is a formal examination by a competent person, supported where necessary by testing, that produces a written report with legal standing. PUWER duties are usually discharged by inspection at risk-based intervals; LOLER duties usually require thorough examination on a defined cycle. Sites that assume one contract covers both tend to find the gap during an audit rather than before it.

Two jurisdictions, two regimes, one duty holder. Organisations operating either side of the Irish Sea are running one set of assets against two rulebooks. The UK works from LOLER’s fixed intervals and written schemes of examination. The Republic of Ireland works per equipment class, from Schedule 1 of S.I. No. 299 of 2007. Examination periods, report wording and notification duties all differ, and lifting equipment inspection in Ireland is not simply LOLER with a different letterhead. Split the programme across two suppliers and the records drift apart within a year.

How WH Scott Group Supports Health & Safety Teams

The register comes before the certificate. Work starts with a site survey: identifying, tagging and recording every item of lifting equipment and every lifting accessory in scope, then setting examination intervals against actual duty and environment rather than a default twelve months. Certification is issued through our online inspection portal, with renewal reminders, downloadable reports of thorough examination, defects graded by urgency, and a multi-site view — so health and safety, engineering and finance can each pull their own evidence without waiting on a supplier.

One programme across every regime that applies to the site. LOLER thorough examination and PUWER inspection sit alongside pressure systems examination under PSSR, LEV thorough examination under COSHH, portable appliance testing and hand-arm vibration assessment. Ten inspection disciplines, grouped into as few site visits as the differing intervals allow, with the Irish estate examined to S.I. 299 under the same programme and the same point of contact.

What we find, we can fix. Most inspection bodies condemn an asset and hand you a report. Because the group also carries out load testing, general overhaul and crane modernisation, remedial work identified at examination is quoted and completed by our own engineers rather than passed to a third party — which is usually the difference between an asset returning to service this week and next month. Planned maintenance runs on Bronze, Silver or Gold terms, with a support line staffed 24/365 behind it.

Competence, training and the safe system of work. Statutory examination proves the equipment. It does not prove the operation. Independent lifting consultation covers equipment selection, duty cycle and the right examination regime for the job, and our in-house overhead crane and slinger signaller training covers legislation, controls, safe working loads, slinging, signalling and PPE. That course is in-house and non-accredited, and we would rather say so up front — if your site requires an externally accredited card scheme, tell us at enquiry stage. Where working at height is the controlling risk rather than the lift itself, height safety services cover lifeline systems and access provision.

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Whether you need a single piece of equipment or a fully engineered lifting system, our specialists can help. Tell us your load, environment and compliance requirements — we’ll do the rest.

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