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.
Changing inspection companies is easier than most estates fear and gets fumbled in the same few places: records that never transfer, a Written Scheme nobody owns, and due dates that slip through the handover. This guide covers what moves with you, what to check, and how to time it without a gap.
Reports belong to the duty holder and move with you
Your scheme
The WSE duty sits with the user, whoever drafted it
No reset
Statutory due dates run on regardless of who examines
One visit
A good incoming provider baselines the estate on visit one
Before you switch
Export every report and the full due date schedule while access is easy
Establish who holds the Written Scheme for each pressure system
Check notice terms, especially where inspection is bundled with insurance
Time the changeover into a quiet stretch of the due date calendar
Findings and what they mean
What transfers, what does not, and who owns what
The records question answers itself once you remember whose duty they serve: examination reports exist so the duty holder can prove compliance, so they are yours to hold whoever produced them. Export everything before the relationship cools, reports, defect histories and the due date schedule, because portal access has a way of ending promptly at cancellation.
Pressure systems add the question estates most often get wrong: the Written Scheme of Examination. The Regulation 8 duty to have a suitable scheme sits entirely with the user or owner, so the scheme is yours even when the outgoing provider's competent person drafted or certified it. Take a copy, hand it to the incoming competent person, and expect them to review it and certify it as suitable, or propose changes, before examining to it. What does not transfer is anybody's goodwill on dates: the statutory clock runs through the handover, and the incoming provider inherits your due dates exactly as they stand.
Finding
Severity
What you must do
Who is told
Examination reports and defect histories
Yours
Export everything before cancelling portal access
They evidence your compliance, not the provider's
The Written Scheme of Examination
Yours
Copy it out and have the new competent person review and certify it
The Regulation 8 duty sits with the user, always
Due dates and intervals
Run on
Hand the incoming provider the full schedule on day one
The clock ignores the handover
The old provider's templates and portal
Theirs
Expect access to end; rely on your own exports
Another reason to export early
Where inspection is bundled with insurance, read the policy before giving notice: some bundles carry notice periods or renewal tie ins, and the cleanest switches are timed to the insurance year rather than fought against it.
Getting back to work
Timing it, and what the first visit should look like
A clean switch is mostly a calendar exercise, and the first visit tells you whether you chose well.
Time the switch into slack, not into due dates
Map the next six months of due dates before you move. The changeover wants a quiet stretch: enough runway that the incoming provider can be appointed, walk the estate and take over the schedule before anything falls due. Switching a week before a cluster of examinations is how gaps happen, and the regulations have no sympathy for handover friction.
If a date will land inside the changeover anyway, say so plainly to both providers and agree in writing who examines it. An item examined late because two companies each thought the other had it is the classic switching failure, and it is entirely preventable with one email.
What a good first visit looks like
Expect the incoming provider to baseline, not just continue: walk the estate against your schedule, reconcile every item and identifier, review the Written Schemes, and read the recent reports for open defects and trends. Expect some findings the old provider never mentioned; fresh eyes on a mature estate always find something, and that is the value of the switch working.
What you should not accept is a quiet degradation: longer report turnarounds, a scheduling desk where you were promised a surveyor, or due dates managed less tightly than before. The first cycle sets the relationship, so hold it to the promises that won the work.
Part 1 of 8
What you own, what moves with you, and what the incumbent keeps
Switching inspection providers feels risky because duty holders systematically underestimate what they own. Start the whole exercise from the ownership facts and most of the fear dissolves: the examination reports are made to you and the statutory duty to keep them is yours, so the entire compliance history stays in your hands whoever wrote it. The Written Schemes of Examination on your pressure systems belong with the user or owner, you, not with whoever drafted or certified them. Your asset register, your intervals, your defect history, your trend data: yours, yours, yours and yours.
The reports, the schemes, the register and the history are the duty holder's; a provider switch moves the service, never the record.
What the incumbent legitimately keeps is their own working papers, their internal survey notes and their systems, and what they take with them is their institutional memory of your plant, the unwritten knowledge in the surveyor's head. That last item is the only real loss in any switch, and the handover discipline in this guide exists mostly to convert it into paper before the door closes.
Frame the decision itself honestly before running the mechanics. Good reasons to switch include chronically thin reports, rotating surveyors with no continuity, assets falling off schedules, service that cannot flex to your production, and pricing that will not survive an unbundled comparison. Poor reasons include one uncomfortable finding, a category you disliked, or a cheaper quote whose surveyor hours per asset do not add up; switching to escape rigour is buying a worse examination at a better price. The statutory intervals run identically under any provider, so the law is indifferent to your choice; the quality of the eyes on your plant is the entire variable.
Key pointYou own the reports, the schemes, the register and the history, so a switch moves only the service; make sure the reason you are moving is service quality, because the statutory clock ticks identically for everyone.
Part 2 of 8
The compliance gap myth, and the one real gap to engineer against
The fear that keeps estates with poor providers is the gap: some imagined period between providers when the plant is out of compliance. Take it apart, because it is almost entirely myth. Compliance is a property of the equipment and its dates, not of the contract: a hoist examined in March on a 12 month interval is compliant until next March whoever holds your schedule, and the switch changes nothing about that arithmetic. There is no re examination reset on a change of provider, no statutory notification, and no approval process; the law cares that a competent person examines each asset by its due date, and not at all about the logo on the report.
Each asset's compliance runs on its own dates regardless of provider: the only gap possible is a due date that falls between the old contract ending and the new one starting.
The one real gap is prosaic: a due date that falls after the incumbent's last visit and before the new provider's first. That is a scheduling problem, and it is engineered away with a dated asset list. Extract every asset's next due date, find the window with the fewest dates, and land the changeover inside it; where a handful of dates cannot be moved out of the crossover, have the incumbent examine them on their final round or the new provider open with them. Slack windows exist in every schedule, and our estate level rule of thumb from the pass 4 build stands: time the switch into slack, never into due dates.
Two edge cases deserve deliberate handling. Postponements in flight on pressure systems belong to a specific examination and its competent person, so close them out or hand them over explicitly, never let one straddle the change. And exceptional circumstances do not respect contract dates: a damaged crane in changeover week gets examined by whoever can attend, because the trigger is the event, not the calendar.
Key pointThere is no statutory gap, reset or notification in a provider switch: compliance rides each asset's own dates, so the only engineering is landing the changeover in a slack window on your due date list.
Worked example
Worked example: a forty asset estate switches in six weeks without a wobble
A joinery group, thirty two lifting assets, five pressure systems, three LEV systems, decides to leave its incumbent after two years of rotating surveyors and blank defect sections across an ageing fleet. The switch runs as a small project with a named owner, and the file it produces is a template worth copying.
The six week switch: records assembled, due dates mapped, slack window chosen, handover letter sent, baseline visit run, first cycle diarised.
Week one assembles the record: every current report pulled into one file per asset, the pressure schemes located and confirmed as the estate's own copies, and the due date list extracted, which immediately reveals the slack window, a seven week stretch in early autumn with only two due dates in it. Week two runs the selection the estate wished it had run years earlier: like for like schedules to two candidates, surveyor hours per asset interrogated, named surveyors and report samples requested, and the sample reports read against Schedule 1 and the estate's own thin ones.
Week three sends two letters. The incumbent gets clean notice per the contract, a request for any outstanding reports and survey data, and the final visit scope: the two due dates inside the crossover window. The new provider gets the full record, the register, and the service histories, so their surveyors arrive knowing the plant on paper. Weeks four to six run the baseline first visit: the new provider walks the whole estate, reconciles the register to the metal, finds one vacuum lifter and four slings that existed on no schedule, and opens files with condition notes on every asset, converting the incumbent's departed memory into new written memory.
The first statutory cycle then lands on the existing dates, untouched. Total compliance events during the switch: zero. Total discoveries: five assets that the fear of switching had protected from examination for years.
Key pointRun the switch as a six week project: assemble what you own, pick the slack window, give clean notice with a defined final scope, and spend the saving on a baseline visit that rebuilds the estate's memory in writing.
Part 4 of 8
The handover pack: converting the incumbent's memory into your paper
The only genuine asset the incumbent takes away is unwritten knowledge, so the weeks before notice are for writing it down, and the request list is short and reasonable. Any reports not yet delivered, including the 28 day pressure reports in flight. The thickness readings and measurement series behind the pressure reports, in data form if they hold them that way, because the corrosion trend is worth more than any single report. Any survey notes they will release on condition and known issues, providers vary in generosity here, but the worst answer to a polite written request is no. And explicit confirmation of anything open: postponements, B category defects awaiting closure, scheme comments recommending revision.
Assemble your own side with equal discipline, because the new provider's first examinations are only as sharp as the history they are given. One file per asset: the report chain, service records, modifications, incidents and exceptional circumstance examinations. The pressure schemes, confirmed current, with any unactioned suitability comments flagged honestly. The defect log with closure evidence. The register itself, walked physically before handover, because registers drift and the changeover is the natural moment to true it up.
Hand the open items over like a shift change, not a house sale. A B category with a date needs the new provider to know the date and the required work; an observation trending needs the series; a scheme comment needs the revision task's status. Write the open items on one page, get the new provider to acknowledge each, and the estate's continuity of judgement survives the change of judge.
One courtesy with practical value: tell the incumbent's surveyor, if there is a good one, why you are leaving and thank them. Fields are small, paths recross, and the surveyor who liked your estate answers the odd question long after the contract ends.
Key pointRequest the undelivered reports, the measurement series and the open items in writing, build one honest file per asset from your side, and hand over open defects like a shift change; the goal is judgement continuity across the change of judge.
Part 5 of 8
Staging the switch: regimes, sites and the people who need to know
Nothing obliges a switch to be total or simultaneous, and the due date map often argues for stages. Regimes can move separately, lifting this quarter, pressure at the scheme year end, LEV at the next TExT, and multi site estates can move site by site, running incumbent and incomer in parallel for a bounded period with the boundary written down: which provider holds which assets, on one page, with no asset on both lists and none on neither. The one discipline staging demands is a single owner for the whole map, because split schedules with no owner is how accessories vanish for a year.
The switch also has an audience beyond the providers, and telling them in the right order prevents the friction that fuels the gap myth. Production and site managers get the changeover calendar first, because new surveyors need access, escorts and machines released. Whoever manages your engineering insurance should know examination arrangements are changing, particularly if you are unbundling an insurer arranged service, so cover and inspection part cleanly at renewal rather than by surprise. Hire desks and any principal contractors you serve get the new provider's name where reports flow to them routinely. And the operators, who will meet unfamiliar engineers asking unfamiliar questions, deserve a line at the shift brief: new examiners, same rules, show them everything.
Expect one cultural wobble and manage it in the open: the incomer's first cycle will find things, and people who liked the quiet old reports may read the new findings as criticism. Say the opposite in advance, loudly, findings are the product, and the estate paid for a sharper pair of eyes on purpose.
Key pointStage the switch wherever the date map argues for it, keep one named owner of the whole asset split, and brief production, insurers and operators before the first new surveyor arrives; findings in cycle one are the purchase working.
Part 6 of 8
Switching mistakes that create the problems the myth predicted
Giving notice before extracting the due date list, then discovering the crossover lands on the busiest examination month
Letting the incumbent's final visits shrink in scope because the relationship has soured, leaving due dates unexamined in the window
Accepting a cheap quote whose surveyor hours per asset cannot physically cover the schedule
Failing to brief the new provider with the record, so their first cycle re learns your plant at your expense
Leaving a postponement, an open B category or an unactioned scheme comment straddling the changeover with no named owner
Losing the measurement series because nobody asked the incumbent for the data behind the reports
Switching every regime on the same day when the due date map argued for a staged move
Choosing the new provider on the sample certificate's design rather than its Schedule 1 contents and the named surveyor's qualifications
Treating the baseline first visit as an optional extra, and paying for the skipped memory rebuild across the next three years of thin reports
Key pointThe switch fails at the seams, open items, crossover dates and departed memory; name an owner for each seam and the myth stays a myth.
Part 7 of 8
Choosing the incomer: the questions that predict the next five years
The switch is only as good as the provider it lands on, and the selection questions that predict quality are knowable in advance because they are the same attributes whose absence made you leave. Ask for the named surveyors who will hold your plant, their qualifications on your equipment classes, and the provider's answer to continuity: will the same engineers return, because the value of year three's examination is built on year one's memory. Ask for sample reports and read them against Schedule 1 and against the best report in your own file; the sample is the product, everything else is packaging.
Interrogate the quote as surveyor time. Hours per asset class, what is opened, stripped or tested, how accessories are handled on their 6 month tier, what the baseline first visit includes, and what reporting looks like: format, delivery time against the 28 day pressure clock, digital access, and whether measurement data comes as data. Ask the conflict question from the insurer and independent comparison in writing, how is examination judgement separated from any commercial interest in remediation, and time the reply. And ask what happens when they find something serious at four on a Friday, because the answer describes the provider you will actually experience.
Weight responsiveness through the sales process at almost nothing: everyone is responsive while selling. Weight instead the specificity of answers, the willingness to name people, and whether their questions to you are good, a provider who asks for your defect log, your schemes and your duty patterns before quoting is pricing an examination; one who quotes from an asset count is pricing a document run, and our comparison of the provider models covers the structural half of the choice.
Key pointSelect on named surveyors, sample reports read against Schedule 1, surveyor hours per asset and written answers to the conflict and Friday afternoon questions; the provider who asks you good questions is the one pricing real examinations.
Part 8 of 8
The first year with the new provider: banking the switch
The switch pays for itself in the first year or not at all, and the difference is whether the estate manages the new relationship deliberately or relapses into filing reports unread. Set the tone at the baseline visit: walk the estate with the surveyor, hand over the one page of open items, agree the report format and the measurement data flow, and fix the calendar for the full first cycle so production sees every date a year out.
Then read the first cycle's reports like an auditor of your own decision. Expect them to be busier than the incumbent's: a fresh pair of eyes on an ageing estate should produce observations, early B categories and scheme comments, and their arrival is the switch working, not the new provider inventing work. Track two numbers across the year, findings per hundred assets and closure time on dated defects, and compare the reports asset by asset against the incumbent's last cycle; the delta is the quality you bought, in writing.
Hold the incomer to their own sales answers. The named surveyors should be the ones attending; the report delivery times should meet what was promised and the 28 day clock where it applies; the data should arrive as data. Slippage in year one is the honest signal of what year three will look like, and it is far easier to correct while the relationship is young and the file of promises is fresh.
Close the year by rebuilding the two column audit, every asset, examined and serviced, and by writing the one document the next switch will thank you for: a live register with due dates, open items and series data that belongs to the estate rather than to any provider. That document is the real lesson of switching, ownership made permanent, and the estate that keeps it never again fears a change of judge.
Key pointBank the switch in year one: baseline properly, read the first cycle against the old one, hold the incomer to their sales answers, and finish with a register the estate owns; the goal is never needing courage to switch again.
Switching Inspection Providers: your questions answered
Do our old inspection reports transfer to the new provider?
They never left you: reports evidence the duty holder's compliance, so they are yours whoever produced them. The practical step is exporting everything, reports, defect logs and the due date schedule, while the old portal still opens, then handing the incoming provider the complete set on day one.
Who owns the Written Scheme of Examination when we switch?
You do, and it is the point estates most often get wrong. The Regulation 8 duty to have a suitable scheme sits with the user or owner of the system; the competent person drafts or certifies it. Take a copy through the switch and have the new competent person review and certify it before examining to it. See HSE's PSSR guidance.
Do examination due dates reset when we change provider?
No. Intervals run from the last examination under statute or scheme, and the handover does not touch them. The incoming provider inherits your calendar exactly as it stands, which is why the switch gets timed into a quiet stretch rather than dropped in front of a due cluster.
Can the old provider withhold anything when we leave?
Not your reports or your scheme; those serve your statutory duties. Their templates, portal and internal records are theirs, and access typically ends at cancellation, sometimes abruptly. The defence is the same either way: export early, before notice is given if the relationship is fragile.
How much notice do we need to give?
Whatever the contract says, and bundled arrangements need the closest read: inspection sold inside an insurance relationship can carry the policy's notice periods and renewal tie ins. Free standing inspection contracts are usually short notice; check for auto renewal dates either way.
Will the new provider re examine everything immediately?
Not statutorily; your current reports stand until their dates. A good incoming provider baselines instead: reconciling the estate against the schedule, reviewing schemes and recent reports, and flagging anything that looks wrong. Expect a few findings the old provider never raised, and treat that as the switch paying for itself.
What if an examination falls due in the middle of the changeover?
Name it early and put the answer in writing: one email to both providers agreeing who examines that item and when. The item that goes overdue because each side assumed the other had it is the single commonest switching failure, and a sentence of clarity prevents it. Our PSSR regulations guide covers the duties that keep running throughout.
Is switching worth the admin?
If service, independence or price prompted the question, usually yes: the admin is a fortnight of calendar work, and the alternative is years of a relationship you already doubt. Run the checklist here, time it into slack, and the switch itself is the easy part.
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.
