PASMA is the Prefabricated Access Suppliers' and Manufacturers' Association — the UK trade body that sets the recognised training and certification standard for assembling, using and dismantling mobile access towers. For tower hire businesses, a current PASMA card is the practical evidence that a hirer's operator meets PUWER's competence requirement on tower work, and the basic document to ask for before the tower leaves the yard.
Why PASMA decides who gets the tower
Mobile access towers — alloy towers, scaffold towers — sit in one of the more accident-heavy brackets in working at height, and the cause is almost always incorrect assembly rather than failure of the kit itself. PASMA cards, held by roughly 250,000 UK workers, are the industry's de-facto answer to the question "how do you know the person assembling this tower knows what they're doing?"
For a tower hire business, accepting a hire from a customer without checking PASMA is a quiet acceptance of risk that doesn't get noticed until the tower comes down. For a site buyer, asking for PASMA at point of hire is the simplest filter for whether a supplier is taking working-at-height seriously.
How PASMA training works
PASMA training is delivered through accredited centres, with separate course grades depending on the work and the type of tower.
- Tower User — the most common course: assemble, use and dismantle low-level and 3T (through-the-trap) towers, the workhorse pattern.
- Tower Manager — for those supervising tower use rather than building.
- Towers for Riggers, Towers on Stairs, Low Level Access (LLA) — specialist variants for specific work.
- Cards are valid for five years; renewal is a one-day refresher course.
- The PASMA Code of Practice sits alongside each manufacturer's assembly guide — both are needed on site, and the manufacturer's guide always wins on detail.
Common mistakes
The four traps that account for most of the bad answers we hear when we ask operators about PASMA.
- Confusing PASMA (the training scheme) with the manufacturer's assembly instructions (the tower-specific build spec). You need both, and the manufacturer's guide is the one that's been engineered for that tower.
- Accepting expired cards at handover. The expiry on the card is the one piece of paperwork the hire desk has to actually check.
- Letting hirers walk away with towers without any PASMA check, then trying to backfill the paper trail when something goes wrong. The timing is impossible to reconstruct.
- Assuming PASMA covers all working at height. It doesn't — MEWPs (scissor lifts, boom lifts) sit under IPAF, and the cards don't substitute for each other.
How MovoGo handles PASMA
MovoGo records PASMA card numbers and expiry against each hire account, surfaces expired or missing cards on the booking screen, and lets you block a tower hire when the card is out of date — without the awkward Friday-evening phone call.
The terms most often confused with, or directly tied to, PASMA.
- IPAF — The global trade body whose PAL Card is the recognised UK operator certification for scissor lifts, boom lifts and other MEWPs.
- 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.
- LOLER — The UK regulation that requires every piece of rental lifting equipment to carry a current Thorough Examination certificate from a competent person.
- HAE SafeHire — The audited UK quality and safety accreditation scheme for plant, tool and equipment hire businesses — the industry's nearest kitemark.
- 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.
