The honest answer to what an inspection costs: a quote built from your asset list. What drives the price in each regime, and the four things an accurate quote needs.
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.
LOLER, PUWER, PSSR and COSHH LEV compliance from one independent inspection body.
A hotel's statutory estate is guest-facing in a way no factory's is: the lift, the pool hoist and the dumbwaiter all touch the guest experience the moment they stop. And the estate is bigger than it looks, because steam is a relevant fluid at any pressure, which puts even the espresso machine's boiler inside PSSR.
SEIS examines the whole house in quiet hours, from plant room to pool side.
Passenger lifts and pool hoists, because they carry people
12-monthly
Dumbwaiters and goods-only service lifts
Any pressure
Even the espresso boiler sits under a Written Scheme
Quiet hours
Examinations timed around occupancy and service
Hospitality cover
Hotels, resorts, pubs, restaurant groups and venues
Front of house and back of house in one programme
Examinations in quiet hours, never at checkout
Group portfolios under one report portal
What needs inspecting
What needs inspecting in a hotel
Front of house runs on LOLER: lifts and hoists that carry guests sit on the strict 6 month cycle. Back of house runs on PSSR and PUWER, and the PSSR net is wider than most operators expect, because steam has no minimum pressure threshold and hot water plant above 110 degrees is in scope too.
Equipment
Regime
Statutory position
What you receive
Passenger lifts
LOLER
Thorough examination at least every 6 months
Report of Thorough Examination
Service lifts and dumbwaiters
LOLER
Every 12 months for goods only; every 6 months where a person can ride
Report of Thorough Examination
Accessible pool and spa hoists
LOLER
Every 6 months, because they lift people
Report of Thorough Examination
Steam boilers and calorifiers
PSSR
Steam at any pressure, and hot water plant over 110 degrees, examined to the Written Scheme
Written Scheme certification and examination report
Espresso and cafe steam boilers
PSSR
Steam at any pressure means the coffee machine's boiler needs a Written Scheme too
Written Scheme certification and examination report
Pool plant pressure vessels
PSSR
Examination to the Written Scheme, report within 28 days
Written Scheme certification and examination report
Kitchen and laundry equipment
PUWER
Inspection at risk-based intervals, no fixed statutory date
Written record of inspection
Loading bay dock levellers and tail lifts
LOLER
6 or 12 months as the competent person determines
Report of Thorough Examination
Cellar gas and dispense systems
PSSR
Compressed carbon dioxide and mixed gases are relevant fluids; systems are assessed against the PSSR thresholds
Written Scheme and report where in scope
Kitchen and laundry machinery inspections under PUWER yield a written record rather than a certificate. The lift maintenance contract does not include or replace the statutory thorough examination.
Sector compliance
Compliance the guest never notices
Done well, statutory work in a hotel is invisible: the lift is examined before breakfast service, the pool hoist between sessions, the boiler house during the afternoon lull. Done late, it is a lift out of service on a checkout morning and a review that names it.
The pressure estate behind the bar
Cafe and espresso steam boilers have a documented history of violent failure, and because steam is a relevant fluid at any pressure they need a certified Written Scheme of Examination before use, exactly like the plant room's calorifiers. Operating one without a current scheme also hands an insurer a reason to walk away from a claim.
The pool adds its own vessels: filters and heat exchangers under pressure sit inside the same Written Scheme discipline, and the accessible pool hoist beside them is on the 6 month people cycle.
How SEIS works around guests
Examinations are scheduled to occupancy: lifts before breakfast or in the afternoon trough, kitchens between services, pools at closed sessions and plant rooms whenever suits engineering. In multi-lift properties cars are examined in rotation so guests always have service.
Group operators get one programme across every property, with reports per asset in the client portal, which turns a brand-standard audit or an insurer's schedule request into a same-day answer.
The hotel estate: lifts front of house, steam and pressure behind it
A hotel's statutory estate splits along the line guests never see. Front of house, the passenger lifts carry people and sit on LOLER's 6 month thorough examination tier, with the hotel as duty holder under the position HSE's lift guidance sets out for owners and facilities managers. Back of house, the goods lifts and dumbwaiters run on the 12 month goods tier, the kitchen and laundry's steam plant answers to PSSR through a Written Scheme, the pool's transfer hoist joins the 6 month people tier, and the maintenance workshop's compressor and the kitchens' machinery carry their PUWER and PSSR duties like any small industrial site.
The hotel mapped: passenger lifts on 6 months, dumbwaiters and goods lifts on 12, steam and calorifier plant to schemes, the pool hoist on the people tier.
Hospitality's distinctive pressure is continuity: the building never closes, the lifts are the guest experience, and every examination competes with occupancy. That is also the sector's answer, because a hotel knows its quiet windows to the hour: examinations live in the low season and the small hours by design, and the estate that plans them there never has to choose between compliance and a full house.
The duty holder is the operator, in practice the general manager through the maintenance lead, and the file answers HSE, the insurer's engineering surveyor, and increasingly the brand standards audit above them all.
Key point
Passenger lifts on 6 months with the hotel as duty holder, dumbwaiters on 12, steam to its schemes and the pool hoist on the people tier: a hotel is a small industrial estate wearing a lobby.
Part 2 of 8
Lifts and dumbwaiters: two tiers, one shaft wall apart
The lift estate carries the sector's clearest tier split. Passenger lifts, guest and service cars alike where people ride, are people lifting equipment: thorough examination every 6 months under Regulation 9, by a competent person independent of the maintenance contract, with supplementary tests as the competent person directs. Goods only lifts and dumbwaiters, the food and linen movers no person rides, sit on the 12 month tier. The distinction is use, not size, and it cuts both ways: a goods lift that staff habitually ride in has quietly promoted itself to the 6 month tier, and the examination position should follow the reality, not the label on the door.
The duty holder point deserves the sector's attention because hotel lift arrangements breed assumption. The maintenance contract, however comprehensive, is care; the thorough examination is judgement; and HSE's guidance for lift owners is explicit that the person responsible for the lift's safe operation, the operator, holds the examination duty. A lift under a full service agreement with no independent examination is the hospitality version of the pattern every sector in this series keeps meeting.
Two operational notes complete the picture. A lift idle through refurbishment is re examined before it carries guests again. And the reports, Schedule 1 contents, retained until the next or two years, belong where the duty manager can produce them at 2am, because that is when the questions arrive.
Key point
Six months where people ride, twelve where only goods do, and the tier follows real use: the examination comes from a hand independent of the maintenance contract, and the reports live where the night manager can find them.
Part 3 of 8
Steam, pool and back of house: the plant room's quiet statutes
The kitchen and laundry are where a hotel becomes industrial. Steam is in PSSR scope at any pressure, so steam ovens, laundry plant and any steam boiler run under a Written Scheme of Examination, certified before use and examined to its intervals with reports in 28 days; pressurised hot water calorifiers and the maintenance workshop's air receiver join the scheme conversation where their stored energy crosses the threshold. The plant room's service contracts keep it all running; none of them is the examination, and the scheme that names half the estate protects half the estate.
The pool brings the people tier back. A pool transfer hoist lifts people, examined every 6 months however seasonally it is used, and rarely used is the sector's trap: a hoist wheeled out twice a month must still be in examination date every time, and its wet, chlorinated life makes the examiner's corrosion judgement earn its fee. Slings and seats are accessories with their own entries and their own cycle.
Back of house machinery completes the map under PUWER: kitchen machines with their guarding, laundry equipment, waste compactors and the workshop's bench stock, maintained in an efficient state with written inspection records on intervals the hotel sets. The compactor deserves the waste sector's sentence: its interlocks are proven on a record, not assumed, because the jam clearing habit arrives with the machine.
Key point
Steam at any pressure, calorifiers and the workshop receiver run to certified schemes, the pool hoist examines every 6 months however rarely it rolls out, and the compactor's interlocks get proven on paper, not trusted.
Worked example
Worked example: the pool hoist that was in the store room, out of date, and needed at noon
A resort hotel keeps its pool hoist in the plant store, used a handful of times a month on request. It was examined faithfully while a previous maintenance manager ran the diary; after he leaves, the hoist's date lapses quietly, because a thing used twice a month is invisible to a busy successor and it was never on the lift contractor's schedule, being nobody's contract at all.
A hoist used twice a month, on nobody's contract and nobody's calendar: fourteen months out of examination when a guest asked for it at noon.
A guest books in and asks for the hoist at midday. The duty manager checks the folder out of habit, finds the last report fourteen months old, and faces the exact choice the regulation exists to remove: use people lifting equipment out of examination with a guest waiting, or refuse a disabled guest the pool. The hotel does the right thing twice, arranges a same week examination and a dignified apology with alternatives meanwhile, but the reputational near miss lands harder than any inspector could: the gap was not engineering, it was ownership.
The rebuild is one line of governance: every statutory asset, including the wheeled, seasonal and stored, on the hotel's central compliance calendar with a named owner, the hoist examined on the same 6 month visits as the passenger lifts, and a rule that no equipment is offered to guests without a current report in the folder. The hoist now gets used more, not less, because the front desk trusts it.
Key point
Rarely used equipment lapses first because it is on nobody's contract: put the hoist on the lift visits, the calendar and a named owner, and never offer a guest equipment the folder cannot vouch for that minute.
Part 5 of 8
Signs a hotel's estate is running on the maintenance contract's reputation
Passenger lifts under full service agreements with no independent thorough examination behind them
A goods lift or dumbwaiter that staff ride, still examined on the goods tier
The pool hoist stored, seasonal, on nobody's contract and past its date
Steam ovens and laundry plant serviced faithfully with no certified Written Scheme
Calorifiers and the workshop receiver absent from any scheme
A lift restarted after refurbishment without re examination
Kitchen machinery and the compactor with guarding checked by habit and recorded nowhere
Examination reports held by the contractor rather than where the night manager can produce them
No central calendar a new maintenance lead could pick up cold
Key point
Every flag is ownership dissolved into contracts: the audit that clears them names one owner, one calendar and one folder the duty manager can open at 2am.
Part 6 of 8
The hotel calendar: low season by design, small hours by habit
The hotel's statutory year is built backwards from occupancy. The 6 month tier, passenger lifts and the pool hoist together, lands twice a year in the low season shoulders, cars examined in rotation so the building never queues. The 12 month goods tier and the scheme intervals on steam, calorifiers and air join the same windows. The PUWER records on kitchen, laundry and workshop run continuously, anchored to the quiet mid afternoon the back of house actually has.
The hotel year built around occupancy: the people tier twice in the shoulders, goods and schemes alongside, records running continuously behind the house.
Two habits fit the trade. Book examiners into the small hours for guest facing work, most competent bodies will schedule nights for lift work in hospitality, and pair each visit with the housekeeping and engineering walk so snags surface while the examiner is still in the building. And run the pre season readiness check, the education sector's September gate wearing a different uniform: before peak season opens, every lift, hoist, scheme and record confirmed in date, so the busiest weeks run on equipment nobody has to think about.
The standing audit is the series' two column check with a hospitality third: per asset, maintained by whom, examined by whom, and owned by whom, reconciled quarterly, because hotel plant accumulates contracts the way lobbies accumulate furniture.
Key point
Examine in the shoulders and the small hours, gate the peak season with a readiness check, and reconcile maintained, examined and owned quarterly: a hotel that plans its stops never has to choose between a full house and a current report.
Part 7 of 8
Documents and audiences: the insurer, the brand and the guest who asks
A hotel's statutory file has commercial readers before regulatory ones. The insurer's engineering surveyor is often the most regular examiner adjacent presence in the building, and the schedule names the lifts, steam plant and calorifiers explicitly. Brand standards and franchise audits increasingly sample statutory compliance directly, and a failed audit moves faster than any enforcement notice. HSE reads the file when it visits, and hospitality visits follow incidents, which is the worst discovery moment this series keeps warning about. And uniquely here, the guest is an audience: the accessibility conversation at the front desk is answered, ultimately, by whether the hoist's report is current.
The filing standard is the series' standard wearing a name badge: every lift and hoist with its current Report of Thorough Examination, the certified schemes with their 28 day reports, the PUWER records, and the defect log with closure dates, indexed by asset, held where the duty manager on any shift can produce it. Groups hold it as a portfolio, one dashboard across properties, which is exactly what the brand audit and the group board both want to see.
The framing for the general manager: this file is guest experience infrastructure. The lift that never strands anyone, the pool that never has to say no, and the kitchen that never stops are all downstream of the same unglamorous folder.
Key point
The insurer and the brand audit read this file before HSE does, and the guest feels it without reading it: one indexed folder per property, one dashboard per group, produce it on any shift.
Part 8 of 8
Running the programme: one body, night visits, a portfolio view
For a hotel or group the efficient arrangement is one independent inspection body across the lifts, the pool hoist, the pressure estate and the lifting odds and ends, scheduled into the shoulders and the small hours, with the PUWER record scope agreed alongside: one calendar per property, one report format, and for groups a portfolio dashboard with defect gradings and due dates across sites. One body also solves hospitality's ownership problem structurally, because the wheeled and seasonal equipment that belongs to no contract belongs to this one.
Independence reads especially well to this sector's audiences: the examiner outside the lift maintenance agreement and the plant service contracts produces findings the insurer banks at face value and the brand audit accepts without a follow up, and when a finding stops a lift or a hoist, the general manager is acting on judgement with nothing behind it but the judgement.
Close the loop at hospitality tempo: reports to the duty file the day they land, a tiered lift or hoist out of guest service until cleared, defect dates honoured ahead of the next peak, and the pre season gate run without exception. A hotel run that way earns the only compliance outcome the sector really wants: equipment that never becomes the story of anyone's stay.
Key point
One independent body across lifts, pool, steam and the wheeled estate, night scheduled and portfolio tracked: hospitality compliance run so no guest, auditor or insurer ever finds the gap first.
Yes. From an independent boutique to a national group, the programme scales, with group reporting under one portal per brand or per property as you prefer.
How quickly can you attend?
Usually within a few working days, scheduled into your quiet hours. Call 0330 043 8191 and we will plan around occupancy, service times and events.
How often is the hotel lift examined?
At least every 6 months, because it carries people, by a competent person independent of the lift maintenance contract. The dumbwaiter runs 12 months if it is genuinely goods only.
Is the espresso machine really a pressure system?
Yes. Steam is a relevant fluid at any pressure, so the coffee machine's steam boiler needs a certified Written Scheme of Examination and periodic examination to it, the same duty as the plant room boiler. Our PSSR guide explains the Written Scheme.
What does the pool hoist need?
A thorough examination at least every 6 months, because it lifts people, alongside the pool plant's pressure vessels which are examined to their Written Scheme. HSE guidance on pressure systems is at hse.gov.uk.
Does kitchen equipment get certificates?
No. Kitchen and laundry machinery is inspected under PUWER at risk-based intervals with a written record kept; there is no PUWER certificate, whatever a supplier's paperwork calls itself.
Can you examine the lift without taking it out at checkout?
Yes. Examinations are timed to the occupancy curve, typically early morning or mid-afternoon, and in multi-lift buildings cars rotate through so one is always running.
What should we hold for a brand or insurer audit?
Current thorough examination reports for every lift and hoist, the Written Schemes and examination reports for all pressure plant including the small steam boilers, and the PUWER records for kitchen and laundry equipment. The portal holds all of it per property.
Book statutory inspections for your Hotels & Hospitality operation
The honest answer to what an inspection costs: a quote built from your asset list. What drives the price in each regime, and the four things an accurate quote needs.
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.
