Editorial standards
How our guidance is produced
The guidance on this site is published by Excel Inspection Solutions Ltd as an organisation. It is not attributed to an individual author, because attributing it to one would overstate what we can evidence about how it was produced. This page sets out where the content comes from, what we will and will not publish, and how to tell us we have got something wrong.
This matters more than it would on most business websites. People read these pages to work out what a regulation requires of them, and acting on a wrong answer has consequences that a marketing page does not. So the standard we hold the content to is stated openly rather than assumed.
Who publishes this content
Excel Inspection Solutions Ltd, an independent statutory inspection company based in Chatham, Kent. The company is led by Joe Ward, a registered Engineering Technician with the Engineering Council and a member of the Society of Operations Engineers and the British Engineering Surveyors Society.
We name the company rather than an individual because the guidance pages carry no individual byline. If and when a named engineer surveyor technically reviews a page, that page will say so, with the name and the date. An unsigned page means no individual has signed it, which is information worth having.
What the guidance is built from
Four source types, in this order of authority:
1. The regulations themselves
LOLER 1998, PUWER 1998, PSSR 2000, the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, as published on legislation.gov.uk.
2. HSE Approved Codes of Practice and guidance
Principally L113 (Safe use of lifting equipment), L22 (Safe use of work equipment), L122 (Safety of pressure systems) and HSG76 (Warehousing and storage). An ACOP has special legal status: departing from it means showing you complied some other equally effective way.
3. British and European standards
Where a standard is the recognised benchmark rather than the law, we say so. BS 7121 for crane operations and BS EN 81-72 and 81-76 for firefighting and evacuation lifts are the two that come up most often on this site. Neither creates a legal duty of its own.
4. The SEMA Code of Practice
For pallet racking, which sits under PUWER and HSG76 rather than LOLER. We name the difference rather than letting the LOLER framing bleed across.
The rules we hold the content to
We separate what the law requires from what we recommend
A statutory duty and an industry benchmark are different things, and reading one as the other is how duty holders end up either over-buying or under-complying. Where a page says a duty is statutory, it cites the regulation. Where something is a code of practice or a convention, the page says that too.
We do not publish figures we cannot source
No invented statistics, no unattributed "studies show", no defect rates or industry percentages presented as data unless the number, its population and its source are stated with it. Where we describe patterns we see in the equipment we examine, we frame them as our observation rather than as measured data.
We do not describe services we do not provide
Guidance pages exist on this site for regimes EIS does not sell into. LEV testing under COSHH is the clearest example: we publish a duty-holder guide to it and we do not offer it, and the guide says so. A guide is not a covert offer.
Coverage and capability claims are confirmed before publication
Service areas, accreditations, scheduling arrangements and pricing structures are only stated on this site once confirmed by the business. Where something has not been confirmed, it is left off rather than hedged into place.
Dates mean what they say
A "last updated" date on a guide changes when the content materially changes, not when the site is rebuilt. The same rule governs the XML sitemap: it reports the date of the last real content change to each page.
What this guidance is not
It is general guidance about UK statutory inspection regimes. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for a thorough examination, and it cannot tell you whether a specific item of your equipment is safe. Only an examination by a competent person can do that.
Regulations, ACOPs and standards are also revised. A page that was accurate when written can fall out of date without anything on it changing. Where a duty matters to a decision you are making, check the current text at the source, or ask us.
How to report an error
If something on this site is wrong, out of date, or reads as more certain than the underlying regulation supports, tell us and we will correct it. Email enquiries@eis-uk.com with the page address and what is wrong with it. Corrections to a factual error are made to the page and the page's updated date is moved.
Need an actual examination, not guidance?
Tell us what equipment you have and where it is, and we will quote against the real item list.
Request a quote