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.
Pressure systems fail examinations differently from other plant. A serious finding triggers a fixed legal sequence, Regulation 10: a written report on the spot, the system out of use, and a copy with the enforcing authority within 14 days. Here is how it runs and how you restart lawfully.
An imminent danger finding stops the system immediately
14 days
The competent person copies the report to the authority
28 days
Window for the standard written examination report
9(7)
The only lawful route to postpone an examination
Do this first
Shut the system down and isolate it from its energy source
Get the competent person's written report before they leave site
Do not operate pending repairs, modifications or new operating limits
Book the repair review with the same competent person
Findings and what they mean
How PSSR classifies what the examiner found
PSSR 2000 does not use the A, B, C labels you may know from lifting equipment. The dividing line is Regulation 10: whether the system will give rise to imminent danger unless repairs or modifications are made, or the operating conditions changed. Everything else lands in the ordinary examination report with a rectification date.
The Regulation 10 sequence is the part duty holders most often get wrong. The competent person immediately gives you a written report naming the system and specifying what must change. You must not operate it. The competent person then sends a copy to the enforcing authority within 14 days of completing the examination, and that duty is theirs, not yours, but the consequences of ignoring the report are entirely yours.
Finding
Severity
What you must do
Who is told
Imminent danger finding under Regulation 10
Serious
Stop the system at once and make the specified repairs, modifications or operating changes before restart
You in writing on the spot, then the enforcing authority within 14 days
Defect with a rectification date
Time bound
Complete the work by the date in the report and keep the evidence
You, in the written report
Observation or advisory
Monitor
Feed it into maintenance planning and watch the trend
You, in the written report
Examination overdue
Non compliant
Take the system out of service until examined, unless lawfully postponed under Regulation 9(7)
Nobody, unless the postponement route is used
The relevant fluids that put a system inside PSSR are steam at any pressure, gas or liquefied gas above 0.5 bar, and pressurised hot water above 110 degrees C. Hydraulic oil systems sit outside the regime, so a hydraulic failure follows PUWER instead.
Getting back to work
Repairs, the written scheme and restart
A pressure system comes back into service through its paperwork as much as through its welds, and the Written Scheme of Examination sits at the centre of both.
Getting the system back on line
Repairs and modifications to a pressure system should be reviewed by the competent person, because a repair can change how and how often the system needs examining. A significant modification means the Written Scheme itself needs reviewing before the system runs again.
Restart follows the report's own words: the specified repairs made, or the operating conditions changed to what the report allows. Where the finding was imminent danger, have the competent person confirm the remedy in writing before pressure goes back on. That single sheet is the difference between a restart and a gamble.
The report, the scheme and your records
The standard examination report reaches you within 28 days and states the defects found, any limits on continued use, and the date the next examination is due. It reads against the Written Scheme, which defines what was examined and how, so keep the two together.
Records matter more under PSSR than almost any other regime because most engineering insurance policies are void where a breach is material to the loss. An overdue examination or an ignored Regulation 10 report is exactly the breach insurers look for after a failure.
Part 1 of 8
What failure means on a pressure system, and why it is never just paperwork
A pressure system fails its examination when the competent person finds a condition that prevents them confirming the system is safe to operate within its Written Scheme of Examination up to the next due date. That wording matters: the judgement is made against the scheme and the safe operating limits, not against a general impression of condition, and the consequences are graded by how far outside those limits the system sits.
A PSSR failure runs down one of two legal routes: repairs required under the scheme before further service, or a Regulation 10 report of imminent danger that stops the system at once.
At the serious end sits Regulation 10. Where the competent person is of the opinion that the system will give rise to imminent danger unless repairs or modifications are carried out, or unless suitable changes to the operating conditions are made, they must make a written report to you at once, and the system must not be operated until the repairs, modifications or changes are made. The examiner also sends that report to the enforcing authority within 14 days. This is the pressure system equivalent of being grounded, and the operating prohibition is absolute from the moment of the report.
Below Regulation 10 sit findings recorded in the ordinary Regulation 9 report: repairs required by a date, derated operating limits pending work, or observations for trending. A derating is easy to underestimate; if the report says the receiver operates at reduced pressure until the corroded shell course is repaired, then running at the old pressure is operating outside the report, which is the same offence dressed in normal clothes. Our guide to reading the examination report covers how these entries are worded.
Key pointA PSSR failure is a judgement against the Written Scheme and the safe operating limits; Regulation 10 stops the system now, and a derating is a stop sign for the pressures above it.
Part 2 of 8
The first day: isolate, depressurise, tell the right people
Pressure systems fail dangerously in ways lifting equipment does not, so the immediate response is about energy before it is about paperwork. A grounded hoist hanging still is safe; a grounded air receiver still holding 10 bar is a stored energy problem wearing a compliance label.
1
Take the system out of service in the engineering sense: stop the compressor or boiler, isolate the system from its energy source, and depressurise where the finding relates to the pressure envelope. Follow the report's wording, because the competent person may specify the safe state, and on steam plant the cooldown itself needs managing.
2
Lock off and label at the isolation points, and tell the people who could restore it: the shift engineer, the maintenance contractor with panel access, the weekend caretaker who resets trips. Pressure systems are restarted by helpful people more often than by malicious ones.
3
Map what the system feeds before the site notices for you. Air tools, sprinkler compressors, autoclaves, heating: knowing what stops tells you what temporary supply you need and prevents someone quietly recommissioning the danger to get production back.
4
For a Regulation 10 report, note the date and hold the report with your isolation record. The examiner's copy goes to the enforcing authority within 14 days as their duty; your file should show the system was already safe long before that clock mattered.
5
Book the repair conversation the same day: what work, by whom, to what standard, and what the competent person needs to see before the system runs again.
Key pointMake the system safe as an energy problem first and a compliance problem second; stored pressure does not care whose duty the paperwork says it is.
Worked example
Worked example: an air receiver failed on wall thickness
A 500 litre air receiver on a joinery site is examined against its scheme, which requires ultrasonic thickness readings on the bottom shell course where condensate sits. The competent person records 5.3 mm against a calculated minimum of 5.5 mm, notes active internal corrosion at the drain, and issues a report requiring the receiver out of service: below minimum wall thickness, imminent danger at the current safe operating limits.
A thickness reading below calculated minimum wall is not a maintenance note; it is the pressure envelope no longer supporting its own safe operating limits.
The site's response is textbook. The compressor is stopped and the receiver depressurised and isolated by mid afternoon, with a hired receiver arranged for the following morning so the shop's air tools run on a vessel with a current report. The failed receiver's drain history is pulled, which shows the automatic drain had been bypassed since a fault in the winter: eighteen months of condensate sitting on the bottom course explains the corrosion rate the examiner trended from the last two reports.
Repair versus replace is decided by arithmetic, not sentiment. A coded repair to the shell course plus re examination costs more than a new receiver of the same duty, so the receiver is condemned, and the replacement is installed with its manufacturer's documents, added to the Written Scheme before first use, and examined in line with the scheme's requirements for the new vessel. The bypassed drain is replaced and put on the weekly checklist, because the receiver did not fail so much as the drain regime did.
The enforcing authority receives the examiner's Regulation 10 copy and does nothing further, which is the usual outcome when the file shows the system safe on the day and the cause fixed within the month.
Key pointWhen the wall is below minimum the vessel has failed at today's pressures, and the only choices are coded repair, replacement, or lower limits set by the competent person; running on hope is not on the list.
Part 4 of 8
Repairs, the Written Scheme and who says the system runs again
Repairing a pressure system is not like repairing a machine guard, because the repair itself changes the pressure envelope the scheme describes. Welding on a code vessel, replacing a shell section, changing a safety valve: each is work that must be done to an appropriate standard, by people competent for pressure work, with the competent person involved before, not after.
Bring the competent person in at the specification stage. They will say what evidence the repair must generate: weld procedures, NDT of the repair, a revised calculation where material was replaced, and what examination the system needs before returning to service. A repair executed beautifully but undocumented buys you a vessel the examiner cannot pass, and the system waits while the evidence is reconstructed.
Where the finding was Regulation 10, the prohibition on operating holds until the repairs, modifications or changes in the report are made. Read that literally: it is the examiner's listed conditions that lift the prohibition, not the general completion of work. If the report requires repair and re examination, both happen before pressure; if it permits operation at reduced limits pending repair, those limits are the law of the system until the work is signed off.
Check whether the repair amounts to modification. A larger receiver, a different safety valve, a new duty: these change the system rather than restore it, and the Written Scheme must be reviewed and revised by the competent person to describe what now exists, before the system is examined against it. A scheme describing yesterday's system protects nobody, and an examination against the wrong scheme is an examination of a system that no longer exists.
Key pointThe competent person's listed conditions are the switch that turns a failed system back on; do the repair to code, document it as you go, and put the scheme back in step with the metal before anyone opens a valve.
Part 5 of 8
The mistakes that make a pressure failure worse
Restoring pressure to finish the week: operating against a Regulation 10 report is operating a system the law says will give rise to imminent danger
Running at the old limits after a derating, because the gauge still reads what it always read
Repairing pressure parts with general fabrication welding, leaving the competent person unable to accept the repair
Treating postponement as a route out of failure: postponement defers an examination that is not yet due, it cannot cure one that has already found danger
Leaving the scheme unrevised after a modification, so the next examination measures a system that no longer exists
Silence toward the boiler or compressor contractor, who resets the trip and restores the danger helpfully
Ignoring what the system feeds, so the failure cascades into sprinklers, breathing air or process cooling without a plan
Discarding the thickness history when the vessel is replaced, losing the corrosion trend that explains the duty
Assuming hired or leased plant carries its own compliance: the user operating the system holds the duty not to run it outside its report
Key pointEvery bad pressure story after a failed examination involves energy restored before the competent person agreed; keep the system dead until the listed conditions are met and the rest is admin.
Part 6 of 8
Hired boilers, leased compressors and package plant: whose failure is it
Failures on hired and packaged pressure plant generate the same ownership confusion as hired lifting equipment, with higher stakes. PSSR splits duties between owner and user depending on the arrangement, and for most hired mobile plant the owner carries the examination duties while the user carries the duty to operate within safe limits and not to run a system reported as dangerous. The practical translation: the hire company gets the examination done, you decide nothing runs against the report.
When hired plant fails on your site, notify the owner in writing the same day with the report reference, and agree in writing who executes the repair and who books the re examination. Do not ship a Regulation 10 vessel back to the depot as if returning a faulty kettle without telling anyone, and do not accept a replacement without its current examination report and evidence it is on a Written Scheme; a swap that arrives paperless has moved the problem, not solved it.
Package plant blurs lines differently: the compressor house or boiler skid maintained by a contractor under a service agreement often has no clear answer to who holds the scheme. Fix that in the contract, not in the crisis. The scheme, the reports and the repair records should sit with whoever operates the system day to day, with the contractor named for maintenance and the competent person named for examination, because in the hour after a failure the question who has the scheme should have a one word answer.
For mobile systems, check the marking requirements are intact after any repair, since the examiner's ability to tie the vessel to its documents is what makes the next examination possible.
Key pointContracts can move the examination duty but never the duty not to operate a failed system; the site running the plant owns the stop, whoever owns the steel.
Part 7 of 8
Reading a failure into your maintenance, water treatment and operating regime
Pressure systems rarely fail their examinations randomly. The finding is usually the visible end of a regime problem, and the examination has value only if the regime changes with the repair. Corrosion findings point at drains, water treatment and lay up practice; safety valve failures point at testing and maintenance intervals; cracking points at cycling, thermal shock or a duty the system was never sized for.
Take the receiver corroded from the bottom: the repair is metal, the cause is water, and the fix that matters is the drain regime and the moisture the compressor feeds forward. Take the boiler failed on water side scale: the competent person will pass the repaired boiler, and the untreated feed water will grow the same failure by the next examination while the treatment contract sits unreviewed. Match the corrective action to the mechanism, not to the component.
Use the trend, not the snapshot. Thickness readings across three examinations describe a corrosion rate, and the rate tells you whether the regime change worked: if the loss per year halves after the drain repair, the file proves the fix; if it does not, the next failure is scheduled and you know its date. Keep superseded readings when vessels are replaced, because fleet history is how you buy the right vessel next time.
Feed all of it back to the competent person before the next visit: the repairs done, the regime changes, the operating hours, anything the system now does that it did not do when the scheme was written. The scheme review conversation is where a failure becomes cheaper examinations rather than repeated ones, and the examiner can only review against what they are told.
Key pointRepair the metal, then fix the regime that consumed it, and let three examinations of trend data prove which one you actually did.
Part 8 of 8
The 28 day report, the enforcing authority and the file you keep
The administration after a pressure failure is brief but unforgiving. The written examination report must reach you within 28 days of the examination in the ordinary case, and immediately in the Regulation 10 case, where the examiner also sends the enforcing authority their copy within 14 days. Chase a late report in writing, because the duty to have and act on it is yours, and hold the failure documents as one file: report, isolation and depressurisation record, repair evidence, scheme revision, re examination report.
Two clocks run after the examination: the written report reaches you within 28 days, and a Regulation 10 report reaches the enforcing authority within 14.
Expect no visit in the normal course. The authority's copy is intelligence, and a file showing the system safe on the day, repaired to code and re examined reads as a duty holder in control. Where interest does follow, it follows patterns: repeat Regulation 10 reports on the same estate, systems that kept running, or an incident elsewhere that brought your postcode up. All are avoidable in the file you are building this week.
Retention is unglamorous and decisive. Keep the Written Scheme current and with the system it describes, keep the reports for the periods the scheme and your insurer require, and keep the failed report beside the clean one that closed it. If the vessel is scrapped, retain its history until the replacement has a trend of its own, because the old vessel's corrosion rate is the design brief the new one was bought against.
One habit ties the whole regime together: after any failure, walk the estate list and ask which other systems share the duty, the water, the age or the contractor. Examining a sibling early is cheap; discovering the pattern at the sibling's Regulation 10 report is not.
Key pointThe authority's copy is a formality when the file is clean; keep the scheme current, the reports together and the trend unbroken, and a failed examination stays a maintenance story.
Can we run the system at lower pressure instead of shutting down?
Only if the Regulation 10 report says so. The report can specify changes to operating conditions as the remedy, and running at the reduced limit it states is lawful. Choosing your own lower number without that wording is still operating against a report that says stop.
Who is the enforcing authority that receives the copy?
HSE for most industrial sites, the local authority for premises like hospitality and retail. The competent person knows which applies and sends the copy within 14 days of completing the examination; you do not need to send anything yourself.
Is the 14 day authority copy our responsibility?
No, it is a duty on the competent person under Regulation 10. Your duties are simpler and harder: do not operate the system, make the changes the report specifies, and keep the report. See HSE's PSSR guidance for the full sequence.
Our hydraulic power pack failed. Does this page apply?
No. Hydraulic oils are not relevant fluids under PSSR, so hydraulic plant is inspected under PUWER instead, and there is no authority notification. The pressure regime covers steam at any pressure, gas above 0.5 bar and hot water above 110 degrees C.
What is a Regulation 9(7) postponement and can it save us?
It lets the examination date move where the competent person agrees in writing before the due date, with the enforcing authority notified. It is a planning tool for systems that cannot be shut down on the due date, not a remedy for a failed examination, and it cannot be applied retrospectively.
Does a failed examination void our insurance?
The failure does not, but ignoring it can. Engineering policies commonly exclude losses where a PSSR breach is material, and operating past a Regulation 10 report is the clearest breach there is. Repair promptly, restart on the competent person's written confirmation, and cover holds.
Our autoclave is small. Does all this really apply?
If it holds steam, yes, because steam at any pressure is a relevant fluid regardless of the 250 bar litre threshold that governs other gases. Small benchtop sterilisers fail examinations on door interlocks and safety valves more often than on their vessels. Our PSSR regulations guide covers the thresholds.
What happens if we quietly keep operating?
The enforcing authority already holds the report, so an inspection or an incident leads straight to prosecution, and the fines for PSSR breaches regularly reach six figures. The system also fails without warning differently from other plant: stored energy does not give you a limp home mode.
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.
