LOLER is the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 — the UK statutory instrument that governs the safety of any equipment used at work to lift loads or people. For hire businesses, LOLER is the regulation that requires every piece of lifting kit you send out to carry a current Thorough Examination certificate from a competent person, on file with the asset and produced for the hirer on request.
Why LOLER decides whether the hire goes out
Every lifting machine you own — forklift, telehandler, MEWP, crane, chain block — sits under LOLER the moment it leaves your yard, and so does every lifting accessory: slings, shackles, eyebolts, lifting beams. The Thorough Examination certificate isn't a paper formality. Without it, the equipment is illegal to put to work on a UK site.
A LOLER breach that contributes to an injury becomes criminal liability for the supplier, the hirer and the competent person who signed (or should have signed) the report. Get LOLER right and the hire moves; get it wrong and the contract, the relationship and the HSE file all open at once.
How LOLER works in practice
LOLER is built around two duties: Thorough Examination at defined intervals, and a written report by a competent person. The intervals depend on what the equipment lifts.
- Equipment for lifting people: Thorough Examination every 6 months.
- Equipment for lifting loads only: every 12 months.
- Lifting accessories (slings, shackles, eyebolts, beams): every 6 months, regardless of value.
- After exceptional circumstances — damage, modification, long out-of-use periods — an additional examination is required.
- An alternative basis: examination "in accordance with a written scheme" drawn up by a competent person.
- The Report of Thorough Examination is written by an independent, technically qualified competent person — usually not the engineer who maintains the equipment.
- The report goes to the employer/owner within 28 days and is kept for at least 2 years; it travels with the equipment to every subsequent owner.
Common mistakes
The four traps that account for most of the bad answers we hear when we ask operators about LOLER.
- Treating LOLER as "the annual test" — the interval depends on what the kit lifts (people vs loads), and accessories are 6-monthly regardless of value.
- Letting your own in-house engineer do the Thorough Examination. LOLER requires independence and competence; the person who maintains the equipment usually shouldn't also be the person signing off on its safety.
- Forgetting the lifting accessories. A yard full of out-of-cert shackles and slings is the LOLER breach that gets missed at audit and noticed at the bottom of a load.
- Not handing the certificate over with the equipment at hire-out. The hirer is entitled to it under the regulations, and most site insurance refuses cover without one on the day.
How MovoGo handles LOLER
MovoGo stores the Thorough Examination certificate against each lifting asset and accessory, surfaces the expiry on the booking screen, and stops you sending out kit with an out-of-date LOLER cert — so a missed re-examination never becomes the chain that ends in front of HSE.
The terms most often confused with, or directly tied to, LOLER.
- Thorough Examination — The independent statutory inspection LOLER requires on lifting equipment and accessories, signed off by a competent person.
- PUWER — The UK regulation that requires work equipment to be suitable, safe, maintained and used only by trained people — the floor every hire has to clear.
- IPAF — The global trade body whose PAL Card is the recognised UK operator certification for scissor lifts, boom lifts and other MEWPs.
- MEWP — A Mobile Elevating Work Platform — scissor lift, boom lift or vertical mast — used to lift people to work safely at height.
- Back to the full glossary
Tomas is co-founder and CEO of MovoGo. With a background in tech startups and a drive to solve complex problems, he leads the company's mission to digitise the construction industry.
