PUWER Training Courses

Regulation 9 of PUWER requires that everyone who uses work equipment has received adequate training in its use, the risks involved and the precautions to take — and that supervisors and managers have the same. The regulations do not name a particular course, so a formal PUWER course is one way of meeting that duty rather than the only way. What matters is that the training is adequate for the equipment and that you can evidence it.

Almost anything used at work. Machinery and power tools obviously, but also hand tools, ladders and access equipment, lifting accessories, appliances, and vehicles used for work purposes. Office equipment is included in principle, though the risks are lower and the controls correspondingly lighter.

The test is whether it is used by an employee at work, not whether it looks like machinery.

PUWER covers all work equipment. LOLER adds further duties specifically for lifting equipment and lifting operations, including thorough examination at set intervals by a competent person. They are not alternatives — a crane, hoist or lifting accessory is subject to both sets of regulations at the same time.

Yes, and this is where organisations most often come unstuck. PUWER duties attach to the person who controls the equipment in use, not only to whoever bought it. Hired plant, leased machinery and second-hand purchases all have to be suitable, maintained and used by trained people. Assuming the hire company has taken care of it is not a defence.

Employers, the self-employed and anyone who has control of work equipment or of the way it is used. In practice that usually means the manager or engineer accountable for equipment on a site or across a business, which is who the Compliance Management course is written for.

Maintenance keeps equipment in efficient working order and good repair. Inspection is a separate check that it remains safe, required where safety depends on the installation conditions or where deterioration would otherwise go unnoticed. They are distinct duties under PUWER, and a maintenance record does not by itself satisfy the inspection requirement.

There is no fixed expiry set by the regulations. What PUWER does require is that training remains adequate — so refresher training is expected when new equipment is introduced, when a process changes, after an incident or near miss, or where someone uses equipment infrequently enough that competence may have faded. Many organisations set a review period of two or three years as an internal standard.

If you are accountable for equipment compliance, the Compliance Management course. If you also operate equipment yourself, the awareness course covers that separately and the two work well together. Regulation 9 applies to managers and supervisors as much as to operators, so a manager who has never had any PUWER training is a gap in its own right.