LOLER thorough examination: what it covers and how often

Lifting equipment — lifts, hoists, cranes, and a range of less obvious items like certain vehicle lifts or lifting accessories — sits under its own regulatory regime, separate from general PPM and separate from the electrical and water categories most facilities teams think of first. It's also, in our experience, one of the categories most likely to slip through the gaps of a general maintenance schedule, because it's easy to assume it's covered by "maintenance" generally when it actually needs its own dedicated examination routine.

Thorough examination is not the same as maintenance

A thorough examination under LOLER is a distinct activity from routine servicing. Servicing keeps equipment running; thorough examination is a formal check by a competent person specifically assessing whether the equipment remains safe to use, with a written report as the output. Both matter, but confusing the two — assuming a service visit covers the statutory examination requirement — is a genuine and fairly common gap.

Frequency depends on what the equipment is and how it's used

The examination interval isn't uniform across all lifting equipment — equipment used to lift people generally needs more frequent examination than equipment used only for lifting goods, and the specific interval depends on the equipment type and its role. Getting this wrong in either direction is a real risk: under-examining creates a genuine safety gap, and over-examining wastes budget that could go toward the rest of the maintenance schedule.

• –Passenger lifts and other equipment used to lift people — generally the shortest examination intervals
• –Goods lifts, hoists and general lifting equipment — intervals set by equipment type and use
• –Lifting accessories — chains, slings, eyebolts — which carry their own, often shorter, examination requirements
• –Any equipment modified or repaired significantly — which may need re-examination outside the normal cycle

What a written report should actually contain

The report from a thorough examination should identify any defects that are, or could become, a danger to people, along with a deadline for remedial action where relevant. A report that's filed away without that deadline being tracked as an actual job defeats much of the point of the examination — see what should happen once an inspection finds a defect for how that handoff should work in practice.

Lifting equipment is also a good example of why a clean asset register matters specifically for statutory categories — it's the register that should be flagging which assets carry a LOLER obligation in the first place, rather than relying on someone remembering which lifts and hoists exist across a multi-building estate.

The two things people conflate

A service visit and a thorough examination look similar from a distance — someone competent attends, inspects equipment and leaves a document. They are not interchangeable. A service is about keeping equipment working; a thorough examination is an independent assessment of whether it is safe to continue in use, and the report exists to be relied on by someone who was not there.

The common failure follows from the confusion: a maintenance contract is assumed to cover the examination, nobody holds an examination report, and the gap surfaces during an audit or, worse, an incident. Worth confirming in writing what a contract actually includes rather than inferring it from the fact that somebody competent visits regularly.

Common mistakes

• –Assuming a maintenance contract includes thorough examination
• –Holding service sheets and treating them as examination reports
• –Not tracking examination intervals separately from service intervals
• –Missing equipment that has been hired in or moved between sites
• –Leaving report defects unactioned because the equipment still appears to work
• –No central register of lifting equipment, so coverage depends on memory

LOLER examination scope, competent person requirements and intervals should be confirmed against current HSE guidance and the advice of a competent examining body — treat this as an orientation, not the regulation itself.