Guidance · Reviewed August 2026
What LOLER stands for, which equipment it covers, how often thorough examination is required, who counts as a competent person, and how LOLER differs from PUWER.
The short answer
LOLER stands for the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998. If you own, operate or control lifting equipment used at work, you must have it thoroughly examined by a competent person — every 6 months for equipment that lifts people and for all lifting accessories, every 12 months for other lifting equipment, or in line with a written examination scheme.
What Does LOLER Stand For?
The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998. They place duties on people and companies who own, operate or have control over lifting equipment — including businesses whose employees use lifting equipment they don’t own.
LOLER sits underneath the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HASAWA) and works alongside PUWER, which covers work equipment generally. If you use anything at work to lift or lower a load, both apply.
What Counts as Lifting Equipment?
Broader than most people assume. LOLER applies to any equipment used at work to lift or lower a load, and to the accessories used to attach it.
Lifting equipment
Passenger and platform lifts, goods and service lifts, dumbwaiters, hoists, cranes, forklift trucks, mobile elevating work platforms, lifting jacks, patient hoists, vehicle tail lifts.
Lifting accessories
Anything used to attach or anchor a load: slings, chains, eyebolts, shackles, lifting beams, hooks. These are the items most often missed — and they need examining every six months, not twelve.
Thorough Examination: How Often?
Regulation 9 sets the intervals. You have two routes: examine at the default periods, or follow a written examination scheme drawn up by a competent person, which can vary those periods where use, condition or environment justify it.
| Interval | Applies to |
|---|---|
| Every 6 months | Lifting equipment used to lift people — passenger lifts, platform lifts, MEWPs, patient hoists — and all lifting accessories, whatever they lift. |
| Every 12 months | All other lifting equipment — goods lifts, cranes, forklift trucks, lifting jacks. |
| Per examination scheme | Where a competent person has drawn one up. Can require more frequent examination where risk of failure is high. |
| Additionally | After installation or assembly, before first use at each new location, and after exceptional circumstances or conditions likely to cause deterioration. |
The most common compliance gap
Applying the 12-month interval to everything, including slings, chains and shackles. Lifting accessories require examination every six months regardless of what they lift. It is one of the failures inspectors find most often, and it is easy to get wrong because the accessories are small, cheap and rarely on anyone’s asset register.
Who Is a Competent Person?
LOLER does not name a qualification. The Approved Code of Practice describes a competent person as someone with the practical and theoretical knowledge and the experience to detect defects and judge how serious they are for continued safe use.
The part that catches employers out is independence. The competent person must be sufficiently independent and impartial to make an objective judgement. In practice that means the engineer who routinely services a piece of equipment should not be the one examining it — you cannot mark your own homework on a statutory examination.
For most businesses this means an external specialist. Whoever does it, both the examiner and the duty holder carry liability if the judgement is wrong.
The Report and What Happens to Defects
A thorough examination is not maintenance and it is not a visual check. HSE describes it as a systematic and detailed examination whose aim is to detect defects that are, or might become, dangerous — and for the competent person to report them to the duty holder and, where appropriate, the enforcing authority.
The competent person decides how far the examination goes, assessing factors such as where the equipment is used, how often, its age and condition, and the weight of the loads. It may include testing where they consider that necessary.
Reports conventionally sort findings into three bands. The labels vary between inspection bodies; the consequences do not.
| Finding | What must happen |
|---|---|
| Immediate danger | Equipment out of service until rectified. The competent person has an independent legal duty to send a copy of the report to the enforcing authority. |
| Defect with a timeframe | A stated deadline for rectification. Missing it is a breach in itself. |
| Observation | Condition-monitoring or best-practice note. No statutory deadline, but worth tracking. |
Note who reports to whom. The competent person notifies the enforcing authority directly — HSE for most industrial premises, the local authority for many warehouses, offices, care homes and retail. You do not control that, and “monitoring” a serious defect while keeping the equipment running is not an option available to you.
Insurance is also worth thinking about. Cover is routinely challenged where an examination is overdue or a serious defect remains unaddressed.
LOLER or PUWER?
Both apply to lifting equipment. They do different jobs, and the distinction matters when someone asks what your inspection regime covers.
| LOLER 1998 | PUWER 1998 | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Equipment used to lift or lower loads, and lifting accessories. | All work equipment, including lifting equipment. |
| Requires | Thorough examination by a competent person at set intervals. | Equipment suitable, maintained, and inspected where necessary for safety. |
| Intervals | Fixed — 6 or 12 months, or by examination scheme. | Risk-based. No fixed statutory interval. |
Put simply: a PUWER inspection is not a LOLER thorough examination, and having one does not discharge the other. See PUWER training.
Planning Lifting Operations
LOLER is not only about equipment condition. Every lifting operation must be properly planned by a competent person, appropriately supervised, and carried out safely. For anything beyond routine repetitive lifts, that planning should be recorded.
Equipment must also be clearly marked with its safe working load, and where it is used to lift people, marked as such. Where accessories are involved, the marking needs to cover the configuration in use — a sling’s capacity changes with the angle it’s used at.
Check which HSE guidance you are working from
The current brief guide is INDG474, Lifting equipment at work, published April 2017. It replaced two earlier leaflets — INDG290 and INDG422 — both of which have been withdrawn. A surprising number of consultancy pages and internal procedures still cite the old ones. The Approved Code of Practice remains L113, Safe use of lifting equipment.
Keeping track of examination dates
Overdue examinations are the commonest enforcement finding, and six-monthly accessory intervals are easy to lose track of. Map what your team needs and when certificates expire — free, no account needed. The tools sit on envicourse.com, our course marketplace, and open in a new tab.
Training
| If you need to… | Usual route |
|---|---|
| Understand your duties | LOLER Awareness — for duty holders and managers who need to know what the Regulations require. |
| Carry out examinations | LOLER Competent Person — the route for anyone becoming a LOLER inspector. |
| Cover work equipment generally | PUWER training, which sits alongside LOLER rather than replacing it. |
| Operate access platforms | IPAF for MEWPs, PASMA for mobile towers. |
| Browse everything | All LOLER training courses. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does LOLER stand for?
The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.
How often does lifting equipment need examining?
Every six months for equipment that lifts people and for all lifting accessories; every twelve months for other lifting equipment. Alternatively, in accordance with a written examination scheme drawn up by a competent person, which can specify different intervals where the risk justifies it.
Do slings and chains need six-monthly examination?
Yes. Lifting accessories require thorough examination every six months regardless of whether they are used to lift people or goods. Applying a twelve-month interval to slings, chains and shackles is one of the most common non-compliances found.
Can our own engineer carry out the thorough examination?
Only if they are genuinely competent and sufficiently independent of the equipment’s day-to-day maintenance. An engineer who routinely services the equipment is not considered independent enough to examine it impartially, which is why most businesses use an external specialist.
Is a LOLER inspection the same as a PUWER inspection?
No. A LOLER thorough examination is a statutory assessment at fixed intervals by a competent person. A PUWER inspection is risk-based, with no fixed statutory interval, and covers work equipment generally. Both apply to lifting equipment, and one does not discharge the other.
Does LOLER apply to equipment we hire in?
Yes. The Regulations apply to businesses whose employees use lifting equipment whether or not the business owns it. Ask for the current report of thorough examination before use, and check the date rather than assuming the hire company has it in hand.
Related Guidance
PUWER training →
Working at height →
Risk assessment →
HASAWA 1974 explained →
All guidance topics →
General guidance only, reviewed against HSE guidance and LOLER 1998 in August 2026. Envico is an independent training intermediary and is not affiliated with the HSE.