LOLER Inspection Software: What UK Lifting Equipment Rules Actually Require

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Overview

01

What LOLER covers and why software enters the picture

LOLER applies across Great Britain. It is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive or the local authority depending on the premises. It covers work equipment for lifting or lowering loads, plus the accessories that connect the load to the machine, and sits on top of PUWER rather than replacing it.

In scope: cranes, forklifts, passenger and platform lifts, MEWPs, tail lifts, goods hoists, winches, patient hoists, and every lifting accessory from chains and slings to shackles and spreader beams. Out of scope: escalators, moving walkways and anything that only moves loads horizontally, though PUWER still applies. Hand pallet trucks fall outside LOLER unless they can raise the forks above 300mm.

Nothing in the regulations is difficult in isolation. The difficulty is volume. A manufacturer with four hundred accessories and sixty items of lifting equipment is managing close to nine hundred examination events a year, each with eleven mandatory data items and a defect workflow. That is where paper stops being defensible.

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The Duties

02

What LOLER actually requires

LOLER imposes eight duties. Most compliance software covers only the last three, which is exactly where audits find the gaps.

Duty	What you must be able to show
Strength and stability	Strong and stable enough for the load, including how it is attached.
Lifting people	Safeguards against crushing, trapping and falling, and a way to be released if trapped.
Positioning and installation	Positioned so the load cannot drift, fall free or be released unintentionally.
Marking	Safe working load marked. Equipment not designed to lift people marked to say so.
Organising lifting operations	Every lift planned by a competent person and supervised. Lift plans, not just certificates.
Thorough examination and inspection	Before first use, after installation at a new location, at the required intervals, and after exceptional circumstances.
Reports and defects	Dangerous defects notified immediately, a written report as soon as practicable, the enforcing authority copied where the risk is serious, equipment out of use until fixed.
Keeping information	Declarations of conformity and reports retained for the required periods and available for inspection.

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Intervals

03

How often a thorough examination is required

The interval depends on what is lifted. Equipment exposed to conditions causing deterioration must be thoroughly examined at least every six months if it lifts people or is a lifting accessory, at least every twelve months otherwise, or at the intervals in an examination scheme. Examination is also triggered by events, not only the calendar.

Trigger	Frequency
Before first use	Once
After installation at a new location	Each time
Equipment that lifts people, and all lifting accessories	Every six months
All other lifting equipment	Every twelve months
Under a written examination scheme	As the scheme states
Exceptional circumstances	Each occurrence
Interim inspection	Risk based

What the examination itself covers

The scope is a matter of professional judgement. It still has to cover everything affecting safety, including deterioration over time. In practice that means visual examination and functional checks, measurement of wear, and in some cases non destructive or load testing. Most lifting equipment does not need routine load testing, and some overload tests can damage the equipment, so testing is a risk based decision rather than a default step.

Who counts as a competent person

The term is not defined in law. The Approved Code of Practice sets the test as enough knowledge and experience of the equipment to detect defects or weaknesses and judge how important they are to continued safe use. The person can be in house, but only if independent and impartial enough to report without fear or favour, and HSE is clear it should not be whoever carries out routine maintenance on that equipment, because they would then be assessing their own work.

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The Report

04

What a LOLER report must contain

LOLER Schedule 1 lists eleven items, and HSE confirms there is no longer a defined format or form provided all eleven are included. A digital report is legally sufficient. A beautifully designed digital report missing one item is not.

1. The name and address of the employer the examination was made for.
2. The address of the premises where it was made.
3. Enough detail to identify the equipment, including date of manufacture where known.
4. The date of the last thorough examination.
5. The safe working load, or the load for the last configuration examined.
6. For a first examination after installation: that it is such an examination, and that the equipment is installed correctly and safe to operate.
7. For any other examination: which interval it falls under, and that the equipment is safe to operate.
8. For every examination: any defect that is or could become a danger and its description, the repair needed, the time by which a not yet dangerous defect could become one, the date of the next examination, particulars of any test, and the examination date.
9. The name, address and qualifications of the person making the report, and their employer.
10. The name and address of whoever authenticates the report on the author’s behalf.
11. The date of the report.

Item eight is where digital forms usually fail. It is not one field. It is a defect record carrying a severity judgement, a remedy, a deadline and a next due date, all of which must survive into the archived report rather than a free text comment box.

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Records and Defects

05

Retention rules and what happens when a defect is found

There is no single retention period. Four rules apply depending on which examination produced the record, and one blanket rule fails in both directions.

Record	Retention period
Declaration of conformity	For as long as you operate the equipment.
First use report, equipment other than an accessory	Until you stop using the equipment.
First use report, lifting accessory	Two years after the report is made.
Report after installation or assembly	Until you stop using the equipment at that location.
Periodic report	Until the next report is made, or two years, whichever is later.
Record of an interim inspection	Until the next such record is made.

HSE states this plainly. Records need not be hard copy, but you must be able to provide a written copy when required and protect them from unauthorised alteration. When a defect is found, the sequence that follows has no discretion in it.

1. Immediate notification. The competent person notifies the employer straight away of any defect that is or could become a danger. Not at the end of the visit, and not when the report is typed up two weeks later.
2. Equipment out of use. The equipment must not be used before the defect is rectified. In a digital system that has to be a real asset state change visible to planners, not a note on a certificate.
3. Written report and enforcing authority. The written report follows as soon as practicable. Where the risk of serious personal injury is existing or imminent, a copy goes to the enforcing authority, which is HSE for hired or leased equipment.
4. Deadline clock for lesser defects. Where a defect is not yet dangerous, the report sets a deadline. Use after that date without a remedy is itself a breach, so the deadline must drive an alert rather than sit in a PDF.

Where paper based compliance breaks down

• Certificates live in the inspection provider’s system, so the register you are audited on is a copy of a copy.
• The asset register and the certificate file disagree, because equipment is decommissioned physically but never in the register.
• Accessories have no durable unique ID, so a sling certificate cannot be tied to the sling in someone’s hand.
• Due dates are calculated from the certificate issue date rather than the examination date.
• Records sit in a spreadsheet anyone can edit, with no history, which fails the expectation of protection from unauthorised alteration.

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Software Requirements

06

What LOLER inspection software actually needs to do

Every capability below traces back to a duty. If a vendor cannot draw that line for a feature, it is a preference rather than a requirement.

Two capabilities sit outside that grid. Both get skipped. Offline capture, because examinations happen in lift shafts, underground and on sites with no signal, and a system that needs connectivity gets bypassed on paper. And lift planning, because the duty to plan every lifting operation is a real obligation that most inspection software does not touch.

Off the shelf or custom

This is a threshold rather than a right answer. Off the shelf wins when your process is standard and you are willing to adapt to the product. Custom becomes the better economics when the software has to match an operating model you will not change, or when you are an inspection provider needing client facing portals under your own brand. Whichever way you go, ask the vendor to point to each of the eleven required items in a report their system generated, say which date the next due date comes from, show what happens the moment a dangerous defect is recorded, and prove a submitted report cannot be edited afterwards.

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Action

07

Next steps

Do not start with the mobile app. Teams that start with capture end up with beautiful digital forms attached to an asset register nobody trusts. Start with the register.

1. Establish register truth. Tag every asset and accessory, give each a durable unique ID, and verify its examination status and next due date against the actual report rather than the tracker. Expect this to surface assets decommissioned physically but never in the system.
2. Get the schedule right before the forms. Configure interval rules by category, load any examination schemes, and turn on the overdue register and alerting. Value lands here before a single digital examination has been captured.
3. Digitise capture, then defects, then the archive. Add Schedule 1 compliant offline capture and run it alongside paper for one cycle. Then the quarantine workflow, then retention and tamper evident archiving with the exports auditors and hire customers need.

Dev Station builds custom digital inspection solutions. LOLER is one of the standards we build against most often, alongside PUWER and client specific statutory regimes. We do not sell a fixed LOLER product, and that is deliberate: the duty holders and inspection providers who come to us have usually tried one and found their operating model does not fit inside it. Our builds start from the regulation, keep one asset spine across every inspection type, capture offline by default, and leave you owning the data and the schema.

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FAQ

08

Frequently asked questions

Is LOLER inspection software a legal requirement?

No. LOLER requires thorough examinations, compliant reports and record retention, not any particular technology. Records do not have to be hard copy, provided you can produce a written copy when required and protect them from unauthorised alteration, which is what makes software the practical choice at scale.

What is the difference between a LOLER inspection and a thorough examination?

The two are not the same. A thorough examination is the formal, detailed examination by a competent person at the required intervals, ending in a Schedule 1 report. An inspection is the lighter risk based check between examinations, often by the operator, producing a written record rather than a full report.

How often does a forklift need a LOLER examination?

At least every twelve months for the lifting function, unless an examination scheme sets a different interval. Fitted with a working platform to lift people, six months applies to that use, and any slings or clamps are accessories needing examination every six months.

Can a LOLER certificate be digital?

Yes. There is no defined format or form for a report of thorough examination, provided all eleven items listed in Schedule 1 are included and the report is authenticated by the competent person.

Sources and further reading

• The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998
• HSE, Thorough examinations and inspections of lifting equipment
• HSE, Safe use of lifting equipment: Approved Code of Practice and guidance
• HSE, Lifting equipment at work: a brief guide

This article summarises UK legislation and HSE guidance and is general information, not legal advice. Duty holders should read LOLER and the Approved Code of Practice in full and take competent advice on their own equipment.