Partner with an independent inspection body to cover your clients’ statutory obligations. One point of contact across all four regimes, with verified written reports and nationwide, multi-site cover for every plant type.
Independent advice on compliance, written schemes of examination and inspection strategy, from competent engineer surveyors with no equipment to sell you.
Plain answers from independent engineer surveyors who write these reports every week.
Everyone in the trade sells LOLER certificates, and the law has never heard of one. The statutory document is the Report of Thorough Examination, and a certificate is worth exactly what its contents match of Schedule 1. This guide is for anyone buying: what the phrase means, how to judge the paper, and the red flags.
No regulation mentions a LOLER certificate anywhere
The real document
A Report of Thorough Examination under Regulation 10
11 items
What any compliant document must contain, whatever its title
Any format
The layout is free, the contents are not
Before you buy
Ask to see a sample report before you commission anything
Judge the paper against the eleven Schedule 1 items, never the title
Ask who the competent person is and how their independence works
Agree the turnaround, defects reach you faster than the paperwork
Findings and what they mean
What the phrase means, and how to judge the paper
The phrase survives because it is useful shorthand: customers ask for a certificate, hire desks demand one, and tender packs have a box for it. Providers oblige with documents titled LOLER certificate, and none of that is a problem, because the law does not regulate the title. It regulates the contents.
Judge any provider's paper the way an inspector would: hold it against the eleven Schedule 1 items. Your details and the premises, particulars that could only identify this item, the safe working load per configuration, the purpose of the examination, the safe to operate opinion, defects with categories and deadlines, tests carried out, the dates of this and the next examination, and the name, address and qualifications of the person who signs. A beautifully sealed certificate missing the purpose statement fails; a plain email attachment carrying all eleven passes.
Finding
Severity
What you must do
Who is told
Document titled certificate, contents match Schedule 1
Fine
Buy with confidence, the title is marketing on a compliant report
Judge contents, not titles
Certificate with items missing
Not compliant
Ask for the full report; if there is not one, walk
A pretty seal cures nothing
Condition entries reading checked satisfactory
Warning
Ask what was actually examined and how
Vague entries fail scrutiny
Forms citing pre 1998 legislation
Walk away
The provider's paperwork has not been reviewed this century
Old templates, old habits
One genuine certificate does exist in the lifting world: the manufacturer's EC or UKCA Declaration of Conformity that ships with new equipment. It proves conformity at supply and says nothing about condition since, which is the examination's job.
Getting back to work
Buying well: the questions that sort providers
The paperwork question is really a provider question, and two conversations sort the market quickly.
Ask for the sample and the signatory
A confident provider hands over a sample report without hesitation, and it walks through Schedule 1 visibly. Ask who signs: the competent person's qualifications appear on the document by law, so you are entitled to know whose judgement you are buying, and how the provider keeps that judgement independent of anyone who maintains or sells the equipment.
Ask about defect flow too. Serious defects reach you verbally on the day and the enforcing authority in writing; a provider who cannot describe that sequence has never run it.
The certificate on the wall is not the compliance
The compliance is the current report, in date, with defects actioned and evidenced. A framed certificate from last year with a lapsed next examination date is decoration, and hire desks and auditors increasingly know it, which is why the questions have moved from have you got a certificate to show me the report and the defect closure.
Build your filing the same way: reports per item, deadlines diaried, closure evidence attached. The paper you can produce in one minute is the paper that ends conversations.
Part 1 of 8
The document the law actually names, and why the industry says certificate anyway
Search LOLER 1998 for the word certificate and, for in service lifting equipment, you will not find the document everyone asks for. The instrument the law names is the Report of Thorough Examination, required by Regulation 10 and defined item by item in Schedule 1. What the industry calls a LOLER certificate is, in every compliant case, that report wearing a friendlier title, and the habit is old, borrowed from the test certificates of pre 1998 law and from the manufacturer's certificates that arrive with new equipment.
The compliant document is the Report of Thorough Examination however the header styles it: the title carries no legal weight, the Schedule 1 contents carry all of it.
The habit is harmless in one direction and dangerous in the other. Harmless, because a document titled LOLER certificate that contains the Schedule 1 items is simply a compliant report with a marketing header; nothing in the law regulates the title. Dangerous, because the word certificate invites two false beliefs: that a pass has been certified, when the document actually records an opinion with any defects and conditions attached, and that the paper itself is the compliance, when the compliance is the examination, the intervals, the defect handling and the retention around it.
So treat the word as a doorway, not a destination. When a hire desk, a principal contractor or an auditor asks for the LOLER certificate, hand them the current Report of Thorough Examination and you have answered the request in full. When a provider offers certificates, judge the sample against Schedule 1 rather than the letterhead, because our guide to reading the report is really the specification of what any certificate must contain.
Key pointThere is no statutory LOLER certificate for in service equipment: the legal document is the Report of Thorough Examination, and a certificate is compliant exactly as far as its contents match Schedule 1.
Part 2 of 8
The Schedule 1 test: how to judge any certificate in two minutes
Because the title proves nothing, the contents prove everything, and Schedule 1 makes the check mechanical. A compliant document identifies the employer and premises, describes the equipment sufficiently to pin it to one machine, states the safe working load for each configuration examined, declares which examination this was, first use, installation, 6 or 12 month interval, examination scheme or exceptional circumstances, records any defect on the statutory tiers with dates and required work, gives the examination date and the latest date of the next, and carries the name, address and qualifications of the person making the report and who they work for.
Run the two minute test on any certificate put in front of you. Can this document describe any other machine you own, and if it can, identification fails. Does it say why the examination happened, the item old templates drop most often. Does the SWL entry match the capacity plate including any attachment derating. Is the defect section explicit even when empty, a positive statement rather than an absence. Is there a real signatory with qualifications, or a company stamp where a person should be.
Two omissions should end the conversation immediately. A document with no next examination date has broken the chain that Regulation 9 intervals hang on, and a document with no purpose of examination cannot prove any interval was honoured. Both are Schedule 1 items; both are absent most often from the prettiest certificates, because decorative templates are usually older than the people using them.
Judge providers by the sample before the price. A provider who sends a Schedule 1 complete sample unprompted has told you how they work; one who sends a crest and a border has told you what they sell.
Key pointJudge every certificate against the Schedule 1 items in two minutes: identification, purpose, SWL, defects stated even when none, dates both ways, and a named qualified signatory; the absence of any one is the answer.
Worked example
Worked example: three documents on one telehandler, and which one is the certificate
A telehandler arrives on site trailed by paper, and a site manager is asked for its LOLER certificate. In the cab folder are three documents: a manufacturer's EC Declaration of Conformity dated eight months ago, a document titled Certificate of Thorough Examination from an inspection body dated five months ago, and a service invoice from last month stamped all checks completed.
Three documents, one answer: the Declaration of Conformity covers the machine's birth, the service invoice covers maintenance, and only the thorough examination document answers the certificate request.
The Declaration of Conformity is a real certificate, but of manufacture, not of in service safety: it certifies the machine was built to the applicable requirements, and for most new equipment it stands in for the first thorough examination only while it is under 12 months old and only where safety did not depend on installation or site assembly. At eight months, on a mobile machine, it still covers the question is this machine allowed to be new; it does not answer is this machine safe in service today.
The service invoice answers a different question again, has the machine been maintained, and answers it outside LOLER entirely. All checks completed by a fitter is maintenance evidence under PUWER, not a thorough examination by a competent person, and no quantity of service stamps accumulates into statutory compliance.
The middle document is the answer, and the manager checks it rather than files it: Schedule 1 contents present, the telehandler's serial matching the plate, forks and attachments listed with the 6 month accessory tier respected, purpose of examination stated, next examination due inside the coming month, which goes straight in the diary. One folder, three documents, and the certificate question answered by the only one the law describes.
Key pointA DoC certifies manufacture, a service record evidences maintenance, and only the Report of Thorough Examination answers the certificate question; know which document does which job and site requests take thirty seconds.
Part 4 of 8
The paper trail through a machine's life: which documents exist when
Lifting equipment accumulates documents in a fixed order, and knowing the sequence tells you instantly what should exist for any machine at any age. At supply: the Declaration of Conformity, the manufacturer's instructions, and where the equipment was tested at manufacture, the maker's test certificates. At installation, for equipment whose safety depends on it: a report of thorough examination after installation and before first use, the one report that certifies the installation rather than the machine. In service: the chain of periodic Reports of Thorough Examination, each pointing to the next date, plus any reports triggered by exceptional circumstances. And for every sling, shackle and accessory: their own reports on the 6 month tier, however small the item.
The chain has a property worth exploiting: it should be continuous, each report's last examination date shaking hands with the previous report's examination date. A gap in the chain is a period the equipment either did not work or worked unexamined, and an auditor reads gaps exactly that way. When you inherit equipment, buy it used, or win a contract with plant included, the previous chain is part of what you acquired; chase it at handover while the seller still answers the phone.
The document chain through a machine's life: Declaration of Conformity, installation report where safety depended on it, then an unbroken series of periodic reports.
Retention runs alongside: reports kept until the next report or two years whichever is later for equipment, two years for accessories, and the installation report for as long as the equipment stays at that place. Keep the Declaration of Conformity for the machine's working life, because it is the document that explains why year one has no report.
Practical filing beats theory: one file per asset, documents in date order, the current report on top, and the next due date living in a diary rather than only on the paper.
Key pointEvery machine's paper trail runs DoC, installation report where relevant, then an unbroken chain of periodic reports with accessories on their own tier; gaps in the chain read as unexamined service, so close them at every handover.
Part 5 of 8
Certificate red flags that survive a pretty template
No purpose of examination anywhere on the document, which means no interval can ever be proven from it
A company stamp in the signatory block where a named person with qualifications should be
One SWL quoted for a machine that plainly has configurations, with no reference to a duty chart
The next examination date missing, or calculated from the report's issue date rather than the examination date
Serial or identification details that do not match the plate on the machine in front of you
A defects section that is simply blank, rather than positively stating none found
Accessories swept into the machine's document instead of carrying their own 6 month tier reports
An examination date that post dates the delivery of the paperwork
The phrase certified safe with no opinion wording, no conditions and no defect tiers anywhere on the document
Key pointA compliant report can wear any title, but a decorative certificate cannot hide a missing Schedule 1 item; check contents against the list and the template stops mattering either way.
Part 6 of 8
Who may sign it: the competent person behind the certificate
A certificate is exactly as good as the judgement behind the signature, and LOLER is specific about whose judgement counts. The thorough examination is made by a competent person: someone with the appropriate practical and theoretical knowledge and experience of the equipment to detect defects and weaknesses and assess their importance for continued safe use, and, per the ACOP's standing guidance, sufficiently independent and impartial to make objective decisions. Those two halves, competence and independence, are both load bearing.
Competence is equipment specific. A signatory brilliant on overhead cranes is not automatically competent on MEWPs, and a certificate is worth less the further it sits from its signatory's real experience. That is why Schedule 1 demands the signatory's qualifications on the face of the document: the report is designed so you can judge the judge. Read that block on every new provider's sample and on any certificate that will carry weight, and expect engineer surveyor grade credentials rather than a job title.
Independence does not mandate an outsider, but it does rule out marking your own homework. The person who performs the routine maintenance should not be the person examining it, because they would be assessing their own work, and in house examination survives scrutiny only where the examiner sits genuinely outside the maintenance chain with authority to fail equipment regardless of production pressure. For most estates the clean answer is an external competent person with no stake in the repair work, which is also the arrangement that reads best beside any incident.
Ask one question of any provider that settles most of this: who exactly will examine our equipment, and what are their qualifications on this equipment class. A good provider answers with names; a poor one answers with a brochure.
Key pointThe signature outranks the letterhead: verify the named person's qualifications on your equipment class and their independence from whoever maintains it, because those two facts are what the certificate actually certifies.
Part 7 of 8
Sites, hire desks and auditors: handling certificate requests without friction
Most certificate pain is not legal but logistical: the principal contractor who wants certificates before plant crosses the gate, the hire desk that wants them back before off hire, the auditor sampling your register on a Tuesday. Each request is reasonable, and each is answered by the same discipline: current reports, retrievable in minutes, tied to identifiable machines.
For site inductions and permits, send the current Report of Thorough Examination for the machine and, for anything lifting people or accessories, the 6 month tier documents alongside. If the site insists on something titled certificate, any compliant provider's report will satisfy on contents; argue Schedule 1, never the title, and the conversation ends quickly. For hired in plant, the report should arrive with the machine as routinely as the keys, and the discipline is to check it before first lift rather than filing it unread: hire fleets are exactly where serial mismatches and stale dates surface.
Digital retrieval has quietly become the difference between painless and painful. Reports as searchable files against an asset register, retrievable by serial in under a minute, turn audits into demonstrations; a filing cabinet three sites away turns the same audit into a finding. The law accepts digital records happily, provided they can be produced and are secure against tampering.
One refusal to practise: never lend, edit or fabricate. A certificate photocopied from the sister machine because the paperwork is in the post is a forged safety document the moment it is relied on, and every party who touched it owns a share of whatever it is later beside. The honest answer, the examination is booked for Thursday, costs a day; the other answer can cost everything.
Key pointAnswer every certificate request with the current report, retrievable in minutes and argued on Schedule 1 contents; the one unforgivable move is passing off any document as covering a machine it does not.
Part 8 of 8
Buying the certificate versus buying the examination
The deepest confusion the word certificate causes is commercial: it makes duty holders shop for a document when they are actually buying an engineering service, and the two purchases optimise for opposite things. A document is cheapest when it is produced quickly, generically and without friction. An examination is valuable when it is thorough, specific and willing to be inconvenient, and its document is merely the residue of that work.
Judge providers by examination behaviour, not certificate aesthetics. How long does the competent person actually spend at each machine class. Do they open, strip or test what the examination requires, or walk past with a clipboard. Do their reports carry observations and trends on ageing equipment, the signature of someone genuinely looking, or a decade of unbroken blank defect sections, the signature of someone genuinely not. Do they push back, fail equipment, attach conditions; a provider who has never inconvenienced you has never protected you either.
Price the whole regime rather than the visit. A cheap examination that misses the cracked hook costs its saving many times over in the incident, the downtime or the prosecution it failed to prevent, and an examination priced honestly reflects surveyor time on your actual plant, access arrangements and reporting quality. Comparing quotes line by line against the equipment schedule reveals more than the totals do: the outlier is usually cheap because something on the list is not really being examined.
The document then takes care of itself, because rigorous examinations produce compliant reports as a byproduct. Buy the examination, and the certificate, whatever its title, becomes what it always should have been: the receipt for work genuinely done.
Key pointYou are buying an engineer's time, judgement and independence, and the certificate is the receipt; a provider selling documents will always be cheaper than one selling examinations, and worth exactly the difference.
The document is fine; the phrase is just not statutory. The law requires a Report of Thorough Examination containing the eleven Schedule 1 items, in any format. A provider may title that document a certificate, and it remains compliant exactly as far as the contents go.
Why does everyone still say certificate?
Because the customers do. Hire desks, tender packs and insurers all ask for certificates, so the trade prints the word. The habit is harmless until someone treats the title as the compliance, which is why the judging rule is contents against Schedule 1, every time.
What is the minimum our paperwork must show to satisfy an inspector?
The eleven items, with three read first in practice: the safe to operate opinion, the purpose of the examination, and the next examination date. An inspector who finds those present, in date and traceable to the item on your floor rarely digs further; missing any one invites the dig. See HSE's guidance on thorough examinations.
Does a certificate from the manufacturer cover a new machine?
The Declaration of Conformity covers conformity at supply, and for most new equipment it stands in for the first thorough examination for up to a year, provided nothing about installation affects safety. It never covers the equipment's life after that; the examination cycle does.
Can we print our own certificate from the provider's report?
You can lay out anything you like for the wall, but the legal document is the report the competent person signed, and only that document is evidence. Keep the signed report untouched on file and decorate however you please.
A hire company is demanding a certificate for kit we own. What do we send?
The current Report of Thorough Examination. If their form insists on the word certificate, send the report with a covering line that it is the statutory document under LOLER Regulation 10; every competent hire desk accepts that, because it is what their own insurers ask them for.
What should a LOLER certificate cost?
Pricing follows the examination, not the paper: equipment type, access, and how many items share the visit. Be suspicious at both ends, of paperwork priced as an add on to a service visit, and of certificates cheap enough that no thorough examination can be behind them. Our LOLER regulations guide covers what the examination itself involves.
Is a certificate from our maintenance company acceptable?
Only if the examining person is genuinely independent of the maintenance, which inside one company needs real separation: the examiner must not be assessing their own work. It is the arrangement most likely to be challenged after an incident, which is why many duty holders simply keep examination and maintenance in different hands.
Talk it through with an independent engineer surveyor today
Partner with an independent inspection body to cover your clients’ statutory obligations. One point of contact across all four regimes, with verified written reports and nationwide, multi-site cover for every plant type.
Independent advice on compliance, written schemes of examination and inspection strategy, from competent engineer surveyors with no equipment to sell you.
