Read the full text: Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 on legislation.gov.uk.
LOLER — the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, SI 1998/2307 — is the UK law governing lifting equipment used at work: cranes, hoists, forklift trucks, vehicle lifts, passenger and goods lifts, mobile elevating work platforms, and the lifting accessories (chains, slings, shackles, eyebolts) used to attach loads to them. It exists because lifting equipment failure is a recurring and often severe cause of workplace injury and death, and it sits alongside the more general Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER), which cover work equipment more broadly.
It is made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and enforced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Every employer whose work involves lifting equipment has duties under LOLER, whether they own the equipment, hire it in, or simply direct how it is used.
What Counts as Lifting Equipment?
LOLER covers any work equipment used for lifting or lowering loads, plus any attachments used for anchoring, fixing or supporting it. A "load" includes a person being lifted. In practice this covers a very wide range of equipment: cranes and hoists, forklift trucks, vehicle inspection platform hoists, passenger and goods lifts, mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs), vehicle tail lifts, and lifting accessories such as chains, slings, eyebolts and shackles used to attach a load to the lifting machinery.
Strength, Stability and Positioning
Regulation 4 requires lifting equipment to be of adequate strength and stability for each load it lifts, taking particular account of the stress at its mounting or fixing point — and requires every part of the load and anything used to attach it to be of adequate strength too. Regulation 6 requires equipment to be positioned and installed to reduce, so far as reasonably practicable, the risk of the equipment or the load striking a person, and to prevent a load falling freely except where it is purpose-designed to do so.
Marking — Safe Working Load
Regulation 7 requires lifting machinery and accessories to be clearly marked with their safe working load (SWL). Where the safe working load varies with configuration — a crane at different jib lengths, for example — either the equipment itself must show the SWL for each configuration, or that information must be kept readily available with the equipment. Accessories such as slings must also be marked so their safe-use characteristics can be identified. Equipment designed for lifting people must be clearly marked as such, and equipment that isn't designed for lifting people but could be mistaken for it must be clearly marked that it is not.
Lifting Equipment for Lifting Persons
Regulation 5 sets a higher bar for equipment used to lift people, such as passenger lifts and MEWPs. It must prevent a person using it from being crushed, trapped or struck, or from falling from the carrier — and where a fall risk from the carrier can't reasonably be prevented because of the site or the height involved, it must have a suitable device to stop the carrier falling. Where even that isn't practicable for reasons inherent in the site, the carrier must use an enhanced safety coefficient suspension rope or chain, and that rope or chain must be inspected by a competent person every working day it's in use.
Planning Every Lifting Operation
Regulation 8 requires every lifting operation involving lifting equipment — any operation concerned with lifting or lowering a load — to be properly planned by a competent person, appropriately supervised, and carried out in a safe manner. For a routine, well-understood lift this can be a simple, established procedure everyone involved already follows. For anything complex, unusual, or involving multiple lifting appliances or a lift over people or live plant, it needs a specific written plan covering the load, the equipment, the route, ground conditions and what happens if something goes wrong.
Thorough Examination Intervals
This is the part of LOLER most people search for. Regulation 9 requires lifting equipment exposed to conditions that could cause dangerous deterioration to be thoroughly examined:
- Every 6 months — equipment used for lifting persons, and lifting accessories (chains, slings, shackles, eyebolts).
- Every 12 months — all other lifting equipment.
- Or in accordance with an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person, which can set different intervals based on the equipment's actual duty and condition.
- After exceptional circumstances liable to jeopardise the equipment's safety — a significant impact, overload, or long period out of use, for example.
Equipment whose safety depends on how it's installed — a tower crane or a hoist built into a building, for example — must also be thoroughly examined after installation and before first use, and again after it's reassembled at a new site or location. Before any lifting equipment is put into service for the first time, it must be thoroughly examined unless it's unused and comes with a valid EC declaration of conformity issued within the previous 12 months.
Reports, Defects and Records
Every thorough examination must be followed by a written report, and Schedule 1 sets out exactly what it must contain: the employer's name and address, the address where the examination took place, enough detail to identify the equipment, the date of the last examination, the safe working load, any defect found and whether it is or could become a danger, the date any defect must be fixed by, confirmation of when the next examination is due, and the name, address and qualifications of the person who carried it out.
How long the report must be kept depends on what was examined: 2 years for lifting accessories; until the next report or 2 years (whichever is later) for other periodically-examined equipment; and for as long as the equipment remains in use at that location for equipment whose safety depends on installation. If a defect found could become an imminent danger, the examiner must notify the relevant enforcing authority as well as the employer.
Penalties for Non-Compliance
LOLER doesn't set out its own offences and penalties — like most HSE-enforced regulations, breaches are prosecuted under Section 33 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974: a fine and/or up to 6 months' imprisonment on summary conviction, or an unlimited fine and/or imprisonment on indictment in the Crown Court. In practice, missed or overdue thorough examinations are treated as a significant aggravating factor whenever lifting equipment failure causes injury, because the whole point of the examination regime is to catch exactly that kind of failure before it happens.
How This Relates to Risk Assessments
LOLER's thorough examination duty is fixed and absolute — it has to happen on schedule regardless of how the equipment seems to be performing, and it has to be carried out by someone independently competent, not assessed informally by the operator. It sits alongside the general risk assessment duty under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which is where the planning and supervision side of a lifting operation gets documented for a specific job. Anyrisks doesn't produce LOLER thorough examination reports — those must come from a competent person who has physically examined the equipment — but it can generate the general risk assessment for the lifting operation itself, covering the load, the site, the personnel involved and the wider hazards of the job, such as a construction risk assessment where a crane or hoist is one of several site hazards.
A Worked Example
A groundworks contractor uses a mobile crane to lift precast concrete sections into place, along with chain slings to attach the load. The crane itself needs a thorough examination at least every 12 months; the chain slings, as lifting accessories, need one every 6 months. Before each lift, a competent person on site plans the operation — checking the load weight against the crane's safe working load for the jib angle being used, the ground conditions, and the exclusion zone needed — and supervises it as it happens. The examination reports for both the crane and the slings are kept on file, and the sling reports are retained for at least 2 years even after they're taken out of service.
