PUWER Risk Assessments In Staffordshire

A conformity assessment of your work equipment against the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. An assessor works through each machine, records every point where it does not meet the requirements, references the finding to the regulation it breaches, and grades it. The output is a report and an action plan, not a pass or a 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.

PUWER sets no frequency for assessments. Regulation 6 ties periodic inspection to risk rather than 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 reflects 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 defines 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 is a genuine source of confusion. What matters is demonstrable knowledge of the equipment, the hazards, the regulations and current safeguarding standards. The employer can delegate the work but never the accountability.

No. PUWER creates no certificate, no expiry date and no document to display. Anyone offering to issue you a PUWER certificate is selling something the regulations do not contain. What the regulations require is that inspection results are recorded and kept available, so the evidence takes the form of reports and records rather than a certificate.

No. A mark records that the manufacturer declared conformity with supply law for the use they intended. PUWER asks 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 a different feed method, or integrated into a line the manufacturer never saw. Substantial modification can invalidate the original Declaration of Conformity entirely.

It depends on the main activity at the site, not the postcode. The HSE is generally the enforcing authority for factories, manufacturing, construction, agriculture and hospitals. Your district or borough council takes warehousing and wholesale distribution, retail, offices, hotels and catering, and leisure. In Staffordshire that is one of eight districts, or Stoke-on-Trent City Council within the city. Two units on the same industrial estate can have different enforcing authorities, and both hold the same powers to serve improvement and prohibition notices.

Not the duty, no. The government has confirmed Staffordshire’s ten existing councils will be replaced by two unitary authorities, expected in April 2028 with shadow elections in May 2027. For local-authority-enforced premises that changes which body inspects you and who you deal with, but PUWER itself is unchanged and an assessment carried out properly now remains valid evidence afterwards.

Almost anything used at work. The definition covers any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation for use at work, from a hand drill to a production line, including equipment hired rather than owned and equipment an employee brings from home. Use is defined just as widely, taking in starting, stopping, programming, setting, transporting, repairing, modifying, maintaining, servicing and cleaning.