PUWER is the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 — the UK statutory instrument that requires any work equipment used by employees to be suitable, safe, properly maintained and used only by trained people. For rental businesses, PUWER is the regulation that sets the floor every piece of kit you hire out has to clear before it leaves the yard — regardless of what the kit is or how short the hire.
Why PUWER underpins almost every hire
PUWER is the broadest of the workplace equipment regulations — wider than LOLER, which sits on top of it for lifting equipment specifically — and it applies to almost every asset in a hire fleet. As a supplier of work equipment, the hire company carries PUWER duties to the hirer: the kit has to be suitable for the intended task, in a safe state, supplied with operating instructions, and accompanied by any information the hirer needs to use it competently.
Most HSE prosecutions of hire firms after a workplace injury cite PUWER as the headline regulation, even when LOLER or another regulation also bites. A clean PUWER posture is the operational base every other compliance regime is built on top of.
How PUWER works in practice
PUWER duties are grouped into a small number of operational themes — and the hire company carries them as the supplier of work equipment, not just the user.
- Suitability: the equipment is right for the task, the environment and the user.
- Maintenance: appropriate to the equipment, on a defined schedule, with records.
- Inspection: by competent persons at suitable intervals — PUWER doesn't fix the calendar the way LOLER does; the interval depends on the equipment and the use.
- Information and instructions: the hirer is given what they need to use the equipment safely.
- Training: operators are trained for the equipment — relevant cards (IPAF, PASMA, telehandler tickets) are the practical evidence.
- Specific requirements: dangerous parts guarded, controls clearly marked, isolation, lighting, warnings, emergency stops.
- Pre-use checks: a documented operator check at the start of each shift before the equipment is used.
Common mistakes
The four traps that account for most of the bad answers we hear when we ask operators about PUWER.
- Treating PUWER as a paper exercise rather than a daily operational discipline — the pre-use check is meant to actually happen.
- Assuming a CE/UKCA-marked machine is automatically PUWER-compliant in use. It isn't; how it's deployed, maintained and operated matters at least as much as how it was manufactured.
- Skipping the pre-use check on small, older or familiar kit ("it's only a breaker"). The prosecution case after the injury rarely cares about the size of the machine.
- Forgetting the supplier-side PUWER duty. It isn't just the hirer's regulation — the hire company is the supplier of work equipment and the duty travels with the asset.
How MovoGo handles PUWER
MovoGo attaches a PUWER service schedule and inspection record to every asset, lets you bundle the operating instructions and pre-use check into the hire pack, and tracks who signed off on each one — so PUWER moves from the back of the manual into the daily flow of the hire.
The terms most often confused with, or directly tied to, PUWER.
- LOLER — The UK regulation that requires every piece of rental lifting equipment to carry a current Thorough Examination certificate from a competent person.
- PASMA — The UK trade body whose training card is the recognised competence standard for assembling and using mobile access towers.
- IPAF — The global trade body whose PAL Card is the recognised UK operator certification for scissor lifts, boom lifts and other MEWPs.
- Condition report — Time-stamped, photographed and signed record of equipment condition at handover and return — the document that turns damage disputes into invoices.
- 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.
