How to Read Your LOLER Report

Intervals, and how the report proves them

The default cycle is fixed by Regulation 9: 6 months for lifting equipment used to lift people and for every lifting accessory, 12 months for other lifting equipment, or the intervals set by a written examination scheme drawn up by a competent person. The report is the only evidence those intervals were honoured, which is why items 4 and 7 exist.

Three events restart the clock regardless of the calendar. A first examination is due before first use unless the equipment carries an EC or UKCA Declaration of Conformity less than 12 months old and was not assembled on site. Equipment whose safety depends on installation must be examined after installation, or after assembly at a new site or location, before first use there. And exceptional circumstances, such as damage, a long period out of use, or a major modification or repair to a critical part, trigger a fresh examination whatever the last report says.

The examination scheme is the provision most estates ignore. A scheme lets a competent person set intervals that fit the actual duty and environment, in either direction: a lightly used goods lift may justify a longer cycle on specific checks, while a fork lift working three shifts in a chilled store may need the mast rope checks pulled forward. If your report shows purpose of examination as under an examination scheme, ask to see the scheme; the report only means what the scheme behind it says.

Retention: which reports you keep, and for how long

Retention under Regulation 11 is not one rule, it is four, and estates that apply a single blanket rule usually keep the wrong things.

• Reports on lifting equipment are kept until the next report is made, or for 2 years, whichever is later
• Reports on lifting accessories are kept for 2 years after the report is made
• The report of the first examination after installation, or after assembly at a new site, is kept until you stop using the equipment at that place
• An EC or UKCA Declaration of Conformity is kept for as long as you operate the equipment, because it is the document that stood in for the first examination

In practice the cheapest defensible policy is to keep everything for the life of the equipment. Storage costs nothing, the run of reports is the deterioration story your examiner trends against, and a complete file is the fastest way to end a conversation with an inspector, an insurer or a hire desk.

What the report triggers beyond your own filing

A report is not always a private document. Where the competent person identifies a defect involving an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury, they must notify you at once, confirm it in the written report, and send a copy of the report to the relevant enforcing authority, HSE for most industrial premises and the local authority for most retail, hospitality and office settings. That copy is why serious defects on your report are never quietly yours to manage: the regulator holds the same page you do.

The report also feeds two commercial relationships. Insurers increasingly ask for the current report rather than a certificate, and engineering policies commonly require examination at the statutory interval, so a lapsed next examination date can put cover in question exactly when you need it. Hire desks run the same logic in reverse: if you cross hire your equipment out, the report travels with it, and the identity items are what let a stranger's site trust your paperwork.

Accessories: the six month tier most estates under file

Lifting accessories, the slings, shackles, eyebolts, chains and lifting beams between the hook and the load, are where report discipline most often breaks down, because every accessory is its own examined item on a 6 month cycle with its own 2 year retention, and estates habitually file them as a job lot. A report covering the visit should still identify each accessory individually, and each entry should trace to a marked item: an identification number, the SWL, and the CE or UKCA marking where present.

The practical failure pattern is a rigging loft of forty slings and a report listing thirty eight, because two were out on a job the day the examiner came. Those two are now on their own clock, and unless someone tracks them, they quietly go overdue while the loft's paperwork looks current. The clean regime is a register: every accessory numbered, every number on a report somewhere, and a rule that anything unexamined at the visit gets swept into the next one within days, not months. Colour coding by examination period, common across construction and offshore work, is not a statutory scheme, it is simply the register made visible at the hook.

Exceptional circumstances: when the calendar does not save you

An in date report answers for the ordinary passage of time. It does not answer for events, and Regulation 9 names the events that trigger a fresh thorough examination whatever the dates say: exceptional circumstances liable to jeopardise the safety of the lifting equipment. In practice that means damage, such as an impact, an overload or a snatch; a substantial modification or the repair or replacement of a load bearing part; a long period out of use; and for equipment exposed to it, events like flood, fire or serious weather on outdoor cranes.

Two habits keep this provision working for you rather than against you. First, make the trigger someone's job: the person who reports the fork lift hitting the racking should know that the truck's report just stopped answering for it, and that it waits for examination, not for the diary. Second, keep the event with the paper: the incident record, the examination that followed and the report it produced belong together, because the sequence is what shows an inspector a duty holder in control. Buying used equipment runs the same logic, which is why most buyers examine on arrival regardless of the seller's dates: transport and reassembly are exactly the sort of circumstances the provision was written for.

The Declaration of Conformity, and the first year of a machine's life

New lifting equipment arrives with one document that genuinely is a certificate: the manufacturer's EC or UKCA Declaration of Conformity. For most new equipment, a DoC less than 12 months old stands in for the first thorough examination, provided the equipment did not depend on installation or on assembly at the site for its safety. Equipment that was installed or assembled, a runway beam, a goods lift, a tower crane, must be thoroughly examined after installation and before first use, whatever the DoC says, because the examination is proving the installation, not the manufacture.

Read your first report on any new machine with that in mind. Its purpose entry should say first examination after installation where installation happened, and the date of the last examination entry will be empty or reference the DoC. Keep the DoC for as long as you operate the equipment: it is the document that explains why year one has no report, and its absence turns a routine paperwork question into an awkward one. From the first anniversary onward, the machine lives on the ordinary cycle and the DoC becomes history rather than cover.

People lifting equipment: what changes on the 6 month tier

Equipment that lifts people, MEWPs, passenger lifts, man riding baskets and hoists, sits on the 6 month cycle alongside accessories, and its reports deserve a stricter read, because the consequence of the opinion being wrong changes category. The Schedule 1 items are the same eleven, but three of them work harder here. The SWL entry doubles as a rated persons capacity, and the report should be legible against the platform plate: a MEWP rated 230 kilograms or two persons should never carry a report quoting only a bare figure with no configuration context. The purpose entry proves the 6 month cycle specifically, so a people lifting machine showing a 12 month gap between item 4 and item 7 is documenting a breach even when everything else reads clean. And the tests entry earns attention, because function tests of the safety devices, overload systems and emergency descent arrangements are where a people lifting examination differs most from a goods only one.

The hire market is where this tier meets most duty holders, and the report discipline is the same in both directions. Hiring in, ask for the current report before the machine works, read the next examination date against your hire period, and if the hire straddles the date, agree in writing who examines it and when. Hiring out or cross hiring, the report travels with the machine, and the identity items are what let the receiving site trust it. A powered access fleet with a clean run of 6 month reports, each traceable to a serial and each carrying its function test entries, is the paperwork half of the only question that matters on this tier: whether the machine will hold the people it carries.