PUWER Risk Assessments In Greater Manchester
Independent Work Equipment Assessments
Something has usually already happened by the time a Greater Manchester business goes looking for this. A machine came with the unit and nobody knows what it was originally set up to do. An environmental health officer from the borough has asked for the assessment and there is not one. A guard came off during a changeover and never went back on.
A PUWER risk assessment measures your work equipment against the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, one machine at a time, and records exactly where it falls short and what has to change to close the gap.
We sell inspections and assessments. Not guarding, not interlocks, not safety relays, not parts, not maintenance contracts. Nothing our assessor writes down becomes a quote for us, which is the entire reason for asking someone independent to hold the pen.
Get Your FREE PUWER Assessment Quote
Send the equipment list and the site address. We aim to come back with a quote within 48 hours. If a borough inspector or an auditor has already given you a date, put it in the message.
PUWER Risk Assessments In Greater Manchester
Independent Work Equipment Assessments
Something has usually already happened by the time a Greater Manchester business goes looking for this. A machine came with the unit and nobody knows what it was originally set up to do. An environmental health officer from the borough has asked for the assessment and there is not one. A guard came off during a changeover and never went back on.
A PUWER risk assessment measures your work equipment against the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, one machine at a time, and records exactly where it falls short and what has to change to close the gap.
We sell inspections and assessments. Not guarding, not interlocks, not safety relays, not parts, not maintenance contracts. Nothing our assessor writes down becomes a quote for us, which is the entire reason for asking someone independent to hold the pen.
What Puts A PUWER Assessment On Your Desk
PUWER fixes no calendar for assessments. Regulation 6 ties periodic inspection to risk rather than to a date, and the only equipment in the whole of PUWER carrying a statutory cycle is the power press. So the useful question is never when the assessment is due. It is what has changed.
- A machine was modified and nobody wrote it down. A welded extension, a bolted-on frame, a locally fitted control, two machines married into a single line. The most frequent trigger in our work, and the one that produces the most high-risk findings.
- The equipment arrived with the unit. The industrial stock here ranges from converted mill floors in Oldham and Bury to nineteen-seventies trading estates across Trafford and Salford, and units change hands regularly. Plant is often inherited with a lease rather than bought to a specification.
- Second-hand or auction machinery. No manual, no Declaration of Conformity, no history, and a data plate that stopped describing the machine some years ago.
- An enforcement visit. The HSE or your borough environmental health team has asked to see the assessment, or an improvement notice has landed with a date on it.
- A customer or insurer audit. A supply-chain assessment has asked for evidence you do not hold.
- Relocation. Equipment moved between sites or repositioned, changing access, isolation, stability and often guarding.
- A near miss or an injury. Something went wrong and the first question asked is whether the machine was compliant.
- New equipment before first use. Regulation 6 requires inspection after installation where safety depends on the installation conditions.
If none of that applies and the equipment has been assessed before, what you probably need is periodic inspection rather than a fresh assessment. We would rather tell you so than sell you the larger job.
What We Keep Finding On Assessed Machinery
The same failures come back again and again across a broad spread of industry. None of them are exotic. They sit on machines people walk past every day.
Modification with nothing behind it. Welded frames, added track systems, retrofitted handrails, machines integrated into a line. No verification of structural integrity, no revised safe working load, no reassessment against the essential health and safety requirements. Substantial modification can invalidate the original Declaration of Conformity, at which point a CE or UKCA plate stops meaning what everyone assumes it means.
Guarding that has quietly gone. Accessible danger zones with no physical guard, exposed motor and drive belt assemblies, and rotating drives reachable through openings in a housing. Usually a changeover that was never reversed.
Emergency stops that do less than they look like they do. Damaged or loose actuators, and stops that halt one function while associated equipment keeps running. A stop that does not remove power from everything it needs to is a finding, not a detail.
Energy that cannot be proved to be off. No evidence that hydraulic systems can be discharged and locked off, and isolation that depends on somebody knowing which breaker to pull.
Controls in the wrong place. Panels that need a ladder to reach, panels sited at an exposed edge, panels with nothing preventing unauthorised use, and automated equipment that starts with no pre-start warning.
Paperwork that does not evidence the duty. No inspection records, no safe operating procedure at the workstation, and training matrices recording the process but never the specific machine. Regulation 5 and Regulation 6 are separate duties, and a service log full of lubrication and reactive repairs does not discharge Regulation 6 however well the machine is maintained.
Markings and lighting. Plates left inaccurate after modification, missing warning and PPE signage, and lighting that fails because surrounding plant throws the working position into shadow.
The Work Equipment We Assess Across Greater Manchester
Ten boroughs, and the plant list changes completely depending on which one you are standing in.
Trafford Park and the logistics corridor. Trafford Park is the largest employment area in Greater Manchester, with more than a thousand businesses on it, and it carries heavy manufacturing and large-scale distribution on the same roads. Dock levellers, balers, conveyor and sortation lines, wrappers, palletisers, shrink tunnels and workshop plant.
Advanced manufacturing and materials. The Atom Valley development zone across Bury, Rochdale and Oldham, taking in Kingsway Business Park and Stakehill, is drawing advanced materials and manufacturing into the north of the city region. Press brakes, guillotines, CNC machining centres, robot cells, welding plant and test rigs.
Mill-floor light industry. The converted textile mills of Oldham, Rochdale, Bolton, Bury and Tameside now hold engineering workshops, joinery, print, textiles and food producers. Older buildings, tight floor plates, and a great deal of machinery that has changed hands more than once.
Food and drink. Bakery and chilled production, filling and packing lines, mixers, slicers, dough plant and clean-in-place systems, with the extraction and washdown environments that come with them.
Print, packaging and paper. Guillotines, folders, laminators, die cutters and balers, a group that consistently produces a high share of serious findings.
Construction plant and vehicle workshops. Depot and yard equipment across Salford, Wigan and Stockport: presses, tyre machines, vehicle lifts, jacks and workshop tooling, plus mobile plant assessed against Regulations 25 to 30.
If your equipment is not on that list, it does not follow that PUWER leaves it out. The definition is deliberately broad: any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation used at work, including equipment you hire rather than own, and equipment an employee brings in from home.
GSB Inspection Services
Ten Unitary Boroughs, One Mayor, And Who Actually Enforces PUWER
Greater Manchester is administratively simpler than most English counties and more confusing than most people expect. There has been no county council since 1986. The ten boroughs, Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan, each operate as a unitary authority, and they work together through the Greater Manchester Combined Authority under a directly elected mayor.
Devolution is what the city region is known for, and its limits are worth stating here. The Combined Authority remit covers transport, regeneration, housing and strategic planning. Health and safety enforcement is not devolved. It sits exactly where it sits everywhere else in Great Britain: with the Health and Safety Executive, or with your borough council environmental health team.
Which of the two applies depends on the main activity at the site rather than the postcode. Under the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998 the HSE is generally the enforcing authority for factories and manufacturing, construction, agriculture and hospitals, while the local authority takes warehousing and wholesale distribution, retail, offices, hotels and catering, and leisure.
Trafford Park illustrates the point sharply. Manufacturing and third-party logistics occupy the same estate, sometimes in adjoining units, and the enforcing authority changes as you cross the yard. Both hold identical powers to serve improvement and prohibition notices. Which one applies to each of your sites is worth pinning down before you need to know, rather than at the point an inspector is standing in reception.
We cover all ten boroughs, and an enquiry reaches the people who run the business rather than a routing desk.
How The Assessment Runs, In Four Phases
Most of the visit is spent on the machines. The parts either side of it decide how useful the report turns out to be.
1
Before we travel.
We work through the legislation, standards and industry guidance that apply to your process and equipment, and establish what good looks like for each item on the list. Any assessments carried out previously are taken into account, including whether their recommendations were ever acted on.
2
Pre-assessment with your duty holder.
Held jointly with whoever carries health and safety responsibility, before anything is surveyed. Scope is agreed and the items within it confirmed, then the systems around them are reviewed: policy and responsibilities, operational procedures and equipment manuals, training records, accident history relevant to the equipment, previous examination and inspection reports, and maintenance arrangements. Having those to hand shortens the day considerably.
3
Each machine is worked against the criteria that apply to it, with the operator present wherever possible, because how a machine is actually run is rarely how the manual says it is run. Expect questions about changeovers, cleaning and clearing blockages, since that is where the real risk tends to sit. Machines are stopped and safely isolated for the guarding, interlock, control and isolation checks. Anything the assessor considers should come out of use is raised on the day rather than held back for the report.
4
One report per machine.
Each item gets its own report so it can be actioned, filed and revisited on its own, cross-referenced into a numbered series where several machines are covered. Equipment details, the assessment matrix, the scored risk assessment, the control measures required, the residual rating once those are in place, a recommended inspection periodicity and a photographic annex.
Assessment, Inspection, Thorough Examination, And The Certificate That Does Not Exist
Four terms get used interchangeably in this market, and briefing the wrong one wastes a visit.
A PUWER risk assessment is a conformity assessment. An assessor works each machine against the regulations, records every point where it does not meet them, gives a written verdict against each criterion, and sets out the control measures needed to close the gap. It is triggered by an event, not by a date.
A PUWER inspection is the periodic in-service check under Regulation 6, looking for deterioration on equipment already established as suitable. It produces a record. That side is covered on our periodic PUWER inspections page.
A thorough examination carries a specific legal meaning. Under LOLER it applies to lifting equipment. Within PUWER it applies only to power presses working cold metal, under Regulations 32 to 35, where the cycle is at least six-monthly with automatic, interlocking or photo-electric guarding and at least twelve-monthly with fixed guards or enclosed tools. That is the single fixed statutory interval in the whole of PUWER. Anyone applying the phrase to your CNC machine or your conveyor is using it loosely.
And there is no PUWER certificate. No statutory document, no expiry date, nothing to laminate and hang beside the machine. What the regulations require is that inspection results are recorded and kept available, so the evidence takes the form of reports and records. A provider offering to issue you a PUWER certificate is selling something the regulations do not contain.
One more point worth stating plainly: more inspection is not automatically safer. The HSE position is that over-testing devices such as emergency stops can wear them out and encourage a tick-box habit. The skill lies in setting the interval the risk genuinely justifies, and deriving that interval is part of what an assessment gives you.
Inside The Report: Every Criterion Graded, Every Hazard Scored
An assessment is not a walk round with a clipboard. Each machine is worked against a fixed set of criteria, every one tied to the regulation it derives from, and each returns a written verdict rather than a tick. The report is organised in four parts.
- Design and installation covers suitability (Regulation 4), conformity with product legislation (10), dangerous parts and guarding (11), protection against specified hazards (12), high and low temperatures (13), controls (14 and 17), stop and emergency stop (15 and 16), isolation of energy (19) and stability (20).
- Management systems covers maintenance (5), inspection (6), specific risks (7), information and instructions (8), training (9), markings (23) and warnings (24).
- Operating considerations covers control systems (18), lighting (21) and maintenance operations (22).
- Mobile considerations covers Regulations 25 to 30. On a fixed installation these are recorded as not applicable rather than dropped, so the report shows the question was asked.
Every criterion returns Satisfactory, Conditionally Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, with a separate yes or no on whether action is required. The two are independent, and a conditionally satisfactory item usually still carries an action. Items that pass are recorded as passing, because a report listing only problems is not evidence of anything.
Alongside the matrix sits a scored risk assessment. Likelihood against severity on a three by three matrix, with severity anchored to major injury as defined in RIDDOR. That gives a score: 7 to 9 is High and needs urgent action, 4 to 6 Medium, 1 to 3 Low. Persons at risk are logged separately for employees, visitors, contractors and the public, because the answer frequently differs between them.
Every hazard also carries a residual rating, showing where the risk lands once the recommended controls are in place. That column is what turns a list of faults into a plan, and it is the one most reports in this market leave out.
Where equipment falls under another regime we say so rather than quietly billing for it twice. Lifting parts attract a LOLER thorough examination, pressure systems need a written scheme of examination under PSSR, extraction needs LEV testing under COSHH, and access at height brings in the Work at Height Regulations. Where one of those already covers the significant risks for an item, it can satisfy the Regulation 6 duty for that item, so there is no sense paying twice.
Our Commitment To Your Safety
We Are A Proud Associate Member Of The Safety Assessment Federation (SAFed)
As an associate member of the Safety Assessment Federation (SAFed), GSB Inspections works to the competency standards and code of practice SAFed sets for inspection bodies. For a PUWER assessment that matters in a particular way: the value of the report rests entirely on the competence and independence of the person who wrote it, and SAFed membership is one of the few external checks on both.
How The Job Runs, And Why Independence Changes The Report
A PUWER assessment produces a list of things that are wrong with your machinery, so it is worth thinking about who is holding the pen. Most firms offering assessments also sell guarding, interlocks, safety relays, light curtains, retrofits and maintenance contracts, which makes their assessment the survey that precedes their quote. Six steps below, and only one of them asks your production to pause.
1
Send an equipment list
Email info@gsbinspections.co.uk or use the form on this page. A plant list or asset register is ideal; machine names and locations on a spreadsheet is enough to begin with. Photographs of anything home-built, heavily modified or bought used are worth more than a description. Say so if an inspector or an auditor has already set a date.
2
Receive a quote
We aim to come back within 48 hours with a price based on the equipment and the site, not on what we expect to find. If your list includes items already covered by a statutory examination you hold, we take them out and explain why rather than charging you to duplicate it.
3
Confirm a date
Machines are stopped and isolated for parts of the assessment, so visits are built around shutdowns, planned maintenance windows, out of hours and weekends. Tell us the constraint at quote stage and we will work to it.
4
GSB sells inspections and assessments. Not guarding, not interlocks, not parts, not maintenance contracts. Reports describe the compliant outcome required rather than naming a product or a supplier. It is worth asking any provider this directly, because a firm that also sells the remedy has a commercial interest in the length of your action plan.
5
The assessment and the report
Pre-assessment and physical survey happen on site, then you receive one report per machine: equipment details, the criteria matrix, the scored risk assessment, control measures, residual risk, a recommended inspection periodicity and photographs of the findings.
6
What happens next
The report is a preliminary risk assessment identifying the measures needed to comply. It is for you to consider internally and to build your own final risk assessments from, which is where the duty sits under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. Once the action plan is closed out we can reassess the remediated items so the record shows the loop was closed, and most sites then move on to periodic Regulation 6 inspections at the interval the report recommends.
GSB Inspections Reviews
Client Satisfaction
Gary has been doing our certifications for the last few years. Very professional and very reliable. A**
Rob Scanlan
Been using GSB for a year, great service keeping all our plant and machinery in certification
James Plant
Excellent service very competent knowledgeable and professional staff Would highly recommend
Carl Eades
Gary has been doing MPi ltd's lifting certifications, air compressor tank and roller shutter door inspections for a number of years now. I have always found him a pleasure to... read more
matt page
Great service. Would highly recommend and will use again.
Jade Furey
Excellent service, very thorough and practical
Kerry Callear
Well what a great service Gary provides, always does a very thorough job, can't recommend enough, we always Gary really great guy.
Daz Griffiths
Inspected transferable winch units with, greatly appreciated, additional guidance covering separate requirements for accompanying D shackles and inspection schedule. Very diligent service and great value.
Andrew Piekarczyk
Great bloke, reliable, informative, pleasure to deal with.
Gary Jackson
Excellent service & communications
Gary Jackson
My first contact was with Gary and he dealt with my query and questions brilliantly. He explained the process, it was easy to sort and it went smoothly. Expected contact... read more
Mrs B
Service, communication, support and advice has been excellent, Garry has gone out of his way to support our school with issues arisen from council maintenance, he has gone out of... read more
Miss H Morrey
Prompt and professional friendly service.
Apples & Pears Nursery
Useful Greater Manchester Resources
Website: greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk
The combined authority for the ten boroughs, led by a directly elected mayor. Its remit runs to transport, regeneration, housing and strategic planning. Health and safety enforcement is not among its powers and has not been devolved, so for a PUWER question you want either the HSE or your own borough council rather than the combined authority.
Elliot House, 151 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3WD
Telephone: 0161 393 4321
Website: gmchamber.co.uk
The largest accredited chamber of commerce in the UK, with members across all ten borough areas and a second office in Bolton. A reasonable first stop for training, funded business support and sector networks if you are new to operating in the city region.
Website: hse.gov.uk/work-equipment-machinery/puwer.htm
The HSE hub for PUWER, covering equipment suitability, inspection and maintenance, training and competence, and mobile work equipment. The HSE is the enforcing authority for factories, manufacturing, construction, agriculture and hospitals. The Approved Code of Practice you are assessed against is L22, Safe use of work equipment, with L112 and HSG236 covering power presses. The regulations themselves sit at legislation.gov.uk.
Your borough council
For warehousing and wholesale distribution, retail, offices, hotels and catering, and leisure premises, health and safety enforcement sits with your borough council rather than the HSE. In Greater Manchester that means one of Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford or Wigan. There is no county council above them and enforcement is not handled at combined authority level. Each environmental health team holds the same powers to serve improvement and prohibition notices as an HSE inspector, so it is worth establishing which authority covers each of your sites before the question arrives.
Frequently asked questions
A conformity assessment of your work equipment against the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. An assessor works each machine, records every point where it fails to meet the requirements, ties each finding to the regulation it breaches, and grades it. What comes back is a report and a prioritised action plan. There is no pass mark and no fail.
No, and it is the most common mix-up in this market. An assessment establishes whether a machine complies in the first place, and is triggered by an event: a purchase, a modification, a relocation, an enforcement visit. An inspection is the periodic in-service check required by Regulation 6, looking for deterioration on equipment already established as suitable. Most sites need both, at different points in the life of the machine.
PUWER sets no frequency for assessments. Regulation 6 ties periodic inspection to risk rather than to a fixed interval, justified by the equipment, its use and its environment. In practice an assessment is repeated when something changes: the machine is modified, moved, used for a different job, or the existing assessment no longer describes what is on the floor. Each report we issue recommends inspection periodicities for the items it covers.
A competent person. The Approved Code of Practice describes that as someone with sufficient knowledge and experience to know what to look at, what to look for, and what to do about what they find. There is no single mandatory qualification, which causes genuine confusion. What matters is demonstrable knowledge of the equipment, the hazards, the regulations and current safeguarding standards. An employer can delegate the work but never the accountability.
No. PUWER creates no certificate, no expiry date and nothing to display. Anyone offering to issue you a PUWER certificate is selling a document the regulations do not contain. What the regulations require is that inspection results are recorded and kept available, so your evidence is reports and records rather than a certificate on the wall.
No. A mark records that the manufacturer declared conformity with supply law for the use they had in mind. PUWER asks a different question: whether the machine is safe for the task you are actually doing, in your environment, with your people. New marked machinery fails assessments regularly, usually because it was installed differently to the manual, guarded for another feed method, or built into a line the manufacturer never saw. Substantial modification can invalidate the original Declaration of Conformity outright.
It follows the main activity at the site, not the postcode. The HSE is generally the enforcing authority for factories, manufacturing, construction, agriculture and hospitals. Your borough council takes warehousing and wholesale distribution, retail, offices, hotels and catering, and leisure. In Greater Manchester that means one of the ten boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford or Wigan. Two units on the same estate can answer to different authorities, and both hold identical powers to serve improvement and prohibition notices.
Not in health and safety enforcement. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the mayoralty cover transport, regeneration, housing and strategic planning. Enforcement of PUWER was never part of the devolution settlement and remains split between the HSE and the individual borough councils exactly as it is elsewhere in Great Britain. It is a reasonable thing to wonder about given how much sits at city-region level here, but for this duty the answer is the borough or the HSE.
Almost anything used at work. The definition takes in any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation for use at work, from a hand drill through to a production line, including equipment hired rather than owned and equipment an employee brings from home. Use is defined just as widely, covering starting, stopping, programming, setting, transporting, repairing, modifying, maintaining, servicing and cleaning.
Tell us when you enquire, and include the date you have been given, because it changes how the visit is sequenced and what the report has to demonstrate. Not holding an assessment is a gap you can close. What makes it worse is closing it with a document that will not stand up when somebody reads it properly. Send the equipment list to info@gsbinspections.co.uk and mention the notice.
Usually yes, but not for the same parts of the machine. LOLER covers the lifting parts; PUWER covers everything else about that equipment, plus everything on site that does no lifting at all. A vehicle lift is the standard illustration: the lifting mechanism under LOLER, the controls, guarding, isolation and stability under PUWER. Where an examination under LOLER, PSSR or another regime already covers the significant risks for an item, it can satisfy the Regulation 6 duty for that item.
Yes, for the parts covering guarding, isolation, controls and interlock function, and for anything requiring safe access. It is normally a short window per machine rather than a lost day, and it can be spread across a shutdown, a maintenance window or out of hours. Tell us your constraints at quote stage and the visit is built around them.
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons for an assessment. The absence of a manual and a Declaration of Conformity is itself a recorded finding, and it changes how the assessor has to approach the machine, because intended use cannot simply be assumed. Photographs sent in advance help, particularly of guarding, controls and anything that looks modified.
Regulation 5 is maintenance: keeping equipment in efficient working order and good repair. Regulation 6 is inspection: a planned, safety-critical check by a competent person, recorded separately. They are distinct duties and confusing them is a recurring enforcement finding. A combined service log recording lubrication, oil changes and reactive repairs does not evidence Regulation 6, however well the machine is actually maintained.
Likelihood against severity on a three by three matrix. Severity runs from minor injuries, through injuries causing time off work, to major injury or death as defined in RIDDOR. That produces a score: 7 to 9 High and requiring urgent action, 4 to 6 Medium, 1 to 3 Low. Persons at risk are recorded separately for employees, visitors, contractors and the public. Every hazard also carries a residual rating showing where it lands once the recommended controls are in place.
No, and it is worth being straight about that. What we carry out is a preliminary risk assessment for the purpose of identifying the measures needed to comply with PUWER. The content is for you to consider internally and to use in forming your own final risk assessments, which is where the duty sits under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. We supply the technical evidence base and the action plan; the risk assessment itself stays with the employer.
No. GSB sells inspections and assessments only, not equipment, guarding, safety systems, parts or maintenance contracts. Reports describe the compliant outcome required rather than naming a product or a supplier. It is worth putting that question to any provider directly, because a firm that also sells remediation has a commercial interest in how long your action plan turns out to be.
GSB Inspection Services
PUWER Assessment Service Areas Across Greater Manchester
Not an exhaustive list. We carry out PUWER risk assessments across all ten boroughs and the towns between them. If your site sits outside these, send us your equipment list and we will tell you plainly whether we can cover it.
- Manchester
- Salford
- Trafford
- Stockport
- Bolton
- Wigan
- Bury
- Oldham
- Rochdale
- Tameside
- Altrincham
- Ashton-under-Lyne
- Sale
- Middleton
Require A PUWER Risk Assessment In Greater Manchester?
No brokers, no call centre, and nothing to sell you off the back of what we find.
Send your equipment list and site location using the form below, or email info@gsbinspections.co.uk. We aim to come back with a quote within 48 hours. If an inspector or an auditor has already given you a date, mention it in the message. Technical questions about what falls under PUWER, LOLER or PSSR can go to 01782 855481, which reaches one of the two directors, both senior engineers.
info@gsbinspections.co.uk
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