LOLER Inspections Chester
Lifting Equipment Thorough Examination
Lifting equipment in Chester runs past its examination date every week of the year, and it is almost never because nobody cared. Usually the renewal sat with a provider who went quiet.
Email your equipment list and the site postcode to info@gsbinspections.co.uk. We aim to have a quote back with you inside 48 hours, and if the date has already gone by, say so when you write. Overdue work is prioritised wherever the schedule allows.
Inspections are the whole of what we sell. No machines, no maintenance contracts, no spare parts.
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Tell us what needs examining and whereabouts in Chester it sits. A quote usually follows within 48 hours.
LOLER Inspections Chester
Lifting Equipment Thorough Examination
Report out of date, or about to be? We will get a competent person to your Chester site and put a Report of Thorough Examination in your hands without a fortnight of sales calls first.
Send the equipment list and postcode to info@gsbinspections.co.uk. Mention anything already overdue and we will prioritise it where we can.
What to do first when the examination date has gone by
Regulation 9 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 fixes the intervals: six months for anything used to lift people and for every lifting accessory, twelve months for other lifting equipment, or whatever period an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person sets in their place.
Once that period runs out, the equipment sits outside Regulation 9 from that day. Not from the day somebody notices, and not from the day the next visit is booked. Nothing in the Regulations grants a few weeks of grace.
So the order of operations matters:
- Take the affected items out of lifting service until a current report exists.
- Find the last Report of Thorough Examination and read the date the next examination fell due. That date, not the invoice and not the sticker, is the one that counts.
- Separate the accessories from the equipment. Slings, chains, shackles, eyebolts and lifting beams sit on the six-month cycle even where the crane or truck they serve sits on twelve.
- Send the list out for quotation with the overdue items marked as overdue.
What we see around Chester is rarely negligence. A provider is acquired and the reminders stop. Equipment moves between a Sealand Road unit and a site over the border, and the paperwork does not follow it. A building changes hands, the lifts come with it and the examination history does not. All of that is recoverable, and none of it needs a procurement exercise to put right.
A Chester address does not always mean an English enforcing authority
Chester is one of the few places in the country where the first enforcement question is not which regulator, but which country.
The England–Wales border runs through the CH postcode area. It runs down the middle of Boundary Lane in Saltney, where the west side of the street is Flintshire and the east side is Cheshire West and Chester. CH4 and CH5 take in Saltney, Broughton, Queensferry and Deeside, and a great many businesses there carry a Chester postal address while sitting legally in Wales.
Start with what does not change. Health and safety is not devolved to the Senedd. LOLER applies in identical terms on both sides of the Dee, the Health and Safety Executive is the regulator across Great Britain, and the HSE’s own published position is that inspection arrangements with Welsh local authorities work the same way as they do in England. Your Report of Thorough Examination does not need to look any different because the site is in Flintshire.
What does change is which local authority enforces where your premises fall to one. Under the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998, where the main activity at non-domestic premises appears in Schedule 1 of those Regulations, the local authority is the enforcing authority. In any other case it is the HSE. Schedule 1 covers office activities, the sale or storage of goods for retail or wholesale distribution, catering, residential accommodation and leisure, among others. Manufacturing, engineering, construction and heavy industrial work fall to the HSE.
For a Chester operator the answer therefore stacks up in two steps:
- Which side of the border is the site on? East, and the council is Cheshire West and Chester. West, and it is Flintshire County Council, or Wrexham County Borough Council further south.
- What is the main activity carried on there? A Schedule 1 activity, and that council enforces. Anything else, and it is the HSE regardless of which side you sit on.
Then there is regulation 3(2), which catches multi-let estates. Where premises are occupied by more than one occupier, each separately occupied part counts as separate premises and is assessed on its own main activity. On an estate like Sealand, a fabrication unit and a trade counter sharing a roofline can genuinely answer to different authorities.
None of this is academic. Where a thorough examination finds a defect that could become a danger to people, Regulation 10 requires the competent person to report it to the enforcing authority as well as to you. Which authority applies is worth pinning down before the engineer travels, and on a cross-border estate it is worth doing site by site.
What our engineer does on the day
Buyers switching provider usually want to know what the visit actually looks like before they commit to anyone. A standard Chester visit runs in this order.
1
On site.
The engineer signs in, sits your induction and works to your access rules. Nothing is examined from a desk or from last year’s report. Equipment is seen, operated where it is safe to operate it, and judged on its condition that day against its rated capacity.
2
The examination.
Load-bearing structure, chains, ropes, hooks and terminal fittings, controls, limit switches and safety devices, anchorage and mounting, and the marking of safe working load. On lift trucks the fork arms are treated as lifting accessories in their own right, which is where a lot of otherwise tidy fleets turn out to have a gap.
3
Anything identified during the examination is categorised by how quickly it needs attention, ranging from items that call for the equipment to be taken out of service through to observations recorded for monitoring. The category and any timescale for remedial action are recorded against each item of equipment.
4
The report.
You receive a Report of Thorough Examination for each item, carrying the particulars required by Schedule 1 of LOLER. It is a legal document rather than a service sheet, and it is the one an insurer, an auditor or an inspector will ask you to produce.
Regulation 10 of LOLER sets out the reporting duties that follow a thorough examination, including those that apply where a defect involves a risk of serious personal injury. Which enforcing authority those duties point to depends on the main activity carried on at the premises and, around Chester, on which side of the border the site sits.
Chester's lifting equipment is not where visitors think it is
A city known for a racecourse, a cathedral and two miles of Roman wall still runs a working industrial estate a mile from the Cross. The lifting equipment here is unusually mixed, and it divides roughly along these lines.
- CH1 – Sealand Industrial Estate, Bumpers Lane and Chester West Employment Park. General industrial and warehousing sitting alongside trade counters and big-shed retail. Overhead and gantry cranes, jib cranes, forklift and reach-truck fleets, dock levellers, chain blocks, and a good deal of long-serving slinging equipment.
- CH4 – Chester Business Park and the Wrexham Road corridor. Offices at scale, with the passenger lifts, goods and service lifts, platform lifts and window-access equipment that go with them, plus workshop and vehicle-lift work on the approaches out towards Saltney.
- CH1 and CH2 – the city core, Hoole and Upton. Hotels, hospitality, retail and healthcare. Passenger and platform lifts, catering hoists, patient hoists and ceiling track hoists, and stairlifts across residential care.
- CH3 – Boughton, Christleton and the eastern villages. Agricultural and estate lifting, telehandlers, tractor loaders, tail lifts and vehicle-mounted cranes on distribution fleets.
Whatever the setting, every sling, chain, shackle, eyebolt and lifting beam is a lifting accessory in its own right and carries the six-month interval. Running accessories on the same twelve-month cycle as the machine they hang from is the single most common gap we find, and it turns up as readily in a smart office block with a goods lift as on a fabrication floor.
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 demonstrates our commitment to complying with industry competency standards and the code of practice set by SAFed. This affiliation emphasises our dedication to maintaining the highest levels of professionalism, ensuring your safety and peace of mind.
LOLER inspections across Chester, west Cheshire and the border
We cover Chester and the wider Cheshire West and Chester area, including Ellesmere Port, and we work across the border into Wrexham and north-east Wales. The rest of Cheshire is covered too, and we work UK-wide, so operators with units inside and outside the region can run one programme rather than several. Where the same site also has pressure equipment, our PSSR inspections in Chester run to the same schedule.
Typical intervals under Regulation 9:
- Equipment used to lift people – 6 months
- Lifting accessories – 6 months
- All other lifting equipment – 12 months
- Or the interval set by an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person
If you run more than one site around Chester, or sites either side of the border, list them all when you enquire. That way the visits can be sequenced sensibly rather than booked one at a time.
The firm that fixes it should not be the firm that passes it
LOLER puts the thorough examination in the hands of a competent person, and the HSE’s position is that the person must be independent and impartial enough to reach an objective view, with genuine authority to quarantine defective equipment. An engineer signing off an examination of maintenance work he carried out himself does not clear that bar.
It is worth looking closely at who you are buying from. A search for lifting inspection around Chester returns a good deal of capacity attached to businesses that also sell the parts, quote for the repairs or hold the service contract. Where one firm services your lifts, finds the fault, prices the fix and issues the report saying the fix was needed, the independence the Regulations assume has quietly gone.
We sell inspections and nothing else. No equipment, no maintenance contracts, no parts, no repairs. If a report says an item needs work, we gain nothing either way, and you place that work with whoever you choose.
Enquiries reach the two directors, who own the business and are both senior engineers. No broker, no call centre, nobody handing you between departments. Technical questions get answered on the call, and the equipment list still comes to us in writing so there is a clean record from first enquiry through to final report.
Useful Chester compliance resources
Regulatory Services, 1st Floor, Wyvern House, The Drumber, Winsford, CW7 1AH. Telephone 0300 123 7038.
The enforcing authority for health and safety at Chester premises whose main activity falls within Schedule 1 of the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998, covering offices, shops, warehousing tied to distribution, hotels, catering and leisure. The council’s health and safety team handles workplace safety for that category of premises and publishes the enforcement policy it works to.
Churchill House, Queen’s Park Campus, Queen’s Park Road, Chester, CH4 7AD.
Founded in 1921 and accredited by the British Chambers of Commerce, this is a cross-border chamber representing members in both West Cheshire and North Wales. Useful for Chester operators running sites on either side of the border who want sector peer contact and compliance benchmarking across the two areas.
The authoritative source on thorough examination intervals, what makes someone a competent person, when an examination scheme can replace the default intervals, and the particulars a report must carry under Schedule 1.
GSB Inspections Reviews
Client Satisfaction
Excellent service, very thorough and practical
Kerry Callear
Excellent service very competent knowledgeable and professional staff Would highly recommend
Carl Eades
Prompt and professional friendly service.
Apples & Pears Nursery
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
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
Been using GSB for a year, great service keeping all our plant and machinery in certification
James Plant
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
Great service. Would highly recommend and will use again.
Jade Furey
Gary has been doing our certifications for the last few years. Very professional and very reliable. A**
Rob Scanlan
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
Excellent service & communications
Gary Jackson
Great bloke, reliable, informative, pleasure to deal with.
Gary Jackson
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
Got Questions? (FAQs)
No. Once the interval in Regulation 9 has passed, the equipment falls outside the Regulations and should come out of lifting service until a current Report of Thorough Examination is in place. There is no grace period written into LOLER. Send your equipment list and Chester site postcode, mark the overdue items as overdue, and we will prioritise them where the schedule allows.
It changes who enforces, not what applies. Health and safety is not devolved, so LOLER, the duties it imposes and the report it requires are identical on both sides of the border, and the HSE regulates across Great Britain. What changes is the local authority where your premises fall to one under Schedule 1 of the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998: Cheshire West and Chester Council on the English side, Flintshire County Council or Wrexham County Borough Council on the Welsh side. A good many CH4 and CH5 addresses are legally in Wales.
It turns on what you mainly do there, not on the address. Where the main activity at the premises appears in Schedule 1 of the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998, meaning office activities, retail and wholesale distribution, catering, residential accommodation or leisure among others, the local authority enforces. Manufacturing, engineering, construction and other industrial work fall to the HSE. Regulation 3(2) means each separately occupied part of a multi-let building is assessed on its own main activity, so two units on the same estate can answer to different authorities.
Regulation 9 sets six months for equipment used to lift people and for all lifting accessories, and twelve months for other lifting equipment. Those defaults can be displaced by an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person, which may set different periods where the duty cycle, the load or the working environment justifies it. An examination is also required after installation or assembly at a new location, and after exceptional circumstances liable to affect safety.
Not on equipment they maintain. LOLER calls for a competent person, and the HSE expects that person to be independent and impartial enough to reach an objective judgement and to hold the authority to quarantine defective equipment. Somebody assessing the outcome of their own maintenance work cannot offer that. It is the most common structural problem we see, and it usually arises where the servicing contractor also issues the report.
No, and treating them as interchangeable becomes expensive the moment an auditor asks. Maintenance keeps equipment running. A thorough examination is a statutory assessment by a competent person of whether the equipment remains safe at its rated load, and it produces a report carrying the particulars set out in Schedule 1 of LOLER. The same engineer may do both, but they are separate legal activities and are recorded separately.
Yes. Fork arms are lifting accessories in their own right, so they sit on the six-month interval while the truck itself is on twelve. A truck with a current annual report and no six-monthly examination of its forks is not fully compliant. Worth adding that LOLER only reaches the lifting parts: brakes, steering, tyres and the rest of the machine are inspected under Regulation 6 of PUWER, so a report citing LOLER alone leaves half the truck uncovered. Our page on forklift truck inspections in Chester sets out what a full examination covers.
Yes, and it is a common pattern around Chester. List every site when you enquire, including any in Wrexham, Flintshire or Deeside, so the visits can be sequenced sensibly rather than booked one at a time. The enforcing authority can differ from site to site, so it is worth noting for each one, and that way a Regulation 10 report reaches the right body if a reportable defect arises. Because we work UK-wide, sites well outside the region can sit in the same schedule.
No, and it is how most new work reaches us. Records are usually patchy at handover, so the first visit can work from what is physically on site rather than from a register that may be out of date, and the schedule gets rebuilt from there. Say that you are switching when you enquire and the first visit is planned around it.
Yes, where they are provided for use at work. Regulation 9 reaches lifts and hoists used to lift people or loads, so passenger lifts, platform and wheelchair lifts, goods lifts and service lifts are all in scope. Anything carrying people sits on the six-month interval and goods-only lifts on twelve. That takes in much of the Chester Business Park office estate and the city-centre hotel and retail stock, and those premises are usually council-enforced rather than HSE-enforced.
The particulars set out in Schedule 1 of LOLER: identification of the equipment, the date of the last thorough examination, its safe working load, what examination was carried out, any defect that is or could become a danger to people, any repair or alteration required and the timescale for it, when the next examination falls due, and the details of the person carrying it out. It is a legal record rather than a job sheet, and it is what an auditor, insurer or inspector will ask to see.
Require A LOLER Inspection in Chester?
No broker chain, no call centre, senior engineers on the enquiry.
Fill in the form below with your equipment list and the Chester site postcode. If a report has already expired, say so, and we will give it priority where the schedule allows.
info@gsbinspections.co.uk
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