LOLER & PUWER Inspections for Care Homes

Care homes carry more lifting equipment than most operators realise — every patient hoist, every sling, every bath lift, every stairlift, every platform lift, and the building's passenger lifts. All of it falls under the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER) and requires regular thorough examination by an independent competent person. The compliance picture has CQC, HSE, and insurer audiences all paying attention to the same evidence trail.

We provide independent LOLER and PUWER thorough examinations for care homes across Kent, London, Essex, and nationwide. The reports stand up to CQC inspection on the Safe key question, satisfy insurer documentation requirements, and — because we don't sell maintenance, hoist parts, or replacement equipment — carry no commercial conflict with the people who service the equipment day-to-day.

For the detailed regulatory framework on lifting-equipment compliance in care home settings, see our dedicated care homes compliance guide. This page covers what we do for care home operators commissioning the actual inspection.

Lifting equipment commonly found in care homes

Across UK care home stock the typical lifting-equipment register includes:

• Mobile patient hoists — battery-powered floor-standing hoists used daily for resident transfers, the highest-frequency item in most homes
• Ceiling-track and gantry hoists — fixed installations in rooms with high-dependency residents
• Stand aids and sit-to-stand transfer aids — lower-lift devices still classed as lifting equipment when used to support a resident's body weight
• Slings — separate LOLER lifting accessories in their own right; each sling needs individual identification, individual examination, and inclusion in the report
• Bath hoists and bath lifts — fixed or portable units for assisted bathing
• Stairlifts — for resident or staff use between floors
• Platform lifts — providing step-free access to building areas the stairlift can't reach (Equality Act 2010 accessibility)
• Passenger lifts — in larger and purpose-built care homes
• Evacuation chairs — for emergency egress from upper floors; not LOLER lifting equipment per se but should be inspected on a comparable cycle and recorded alongside
• Goods lifts and dumbwaiters — used for laundry, meals, supplies; goods-only equipment is on the 12-monthly LOLER interval rather than 6-monthly

Regulatory framework for care home lifting equipment

Care homes sit at the intersection of several overlapping regimes. Each has its own enforcement audience and its own evidence trail.

• LOLER 1998 — the primary regulation. Regulation 9 sets the 6-monthly examination interval for equipment lifting persons and the 12-monthly interval for goods-only lifting equipment. Regulation 9 also covers lifting accessories (slings) at the 6-monthly interval. Regulation 10 governs defect reporting and HSE notification for imminent-risk defects. Regulation 11 governs report retention.
• PUWER 1998 — applies to all work equipment regardless of lifting function, in parallel with LOLER. Stand aids, mobile equipment, transfer boards, kitchen equipment and laundry plant all sit under PUWER.
• CQC framework (Health and Social Care Act 2008) — under the Single Assessment Framework, equipment safety is captured under the "Safe" key question via Quality Statements covering safe environments, safe and effective staffing, and learning culture. Current LOLER reports are the evidence inspectors look for.
• CQC Regulations 2014 — Regulation 12 (Safe Care and Treatment) and Regulation 15 (Premises and Equipment) both require equipment to be maintained in safe working order; LOLER examination is the statutory mechanism that satisfies that requirement for lifting equipment.
• Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 — sit alongside LOLER. Where MHOR requires the use of mechanical aids to avoid manual handling risk, those aids then fall under LOLER for examination.
• Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 — the overarching duty of care; section 37 catches directors and senior officers personally where a corporate offence is committed with their consent, connivance, or attributable to their neglect.

For deeper coverage of how CQC's Quality Statements map to lifting equipment evidence, the existing care homes guide is the longer read.

Why care homes choose an independent inspector

The competent person carrying out the LOLER thorough examination must be independent of the people maintaining the equipment. HSE ACOP L113 sets this out — the rationale is structural: a maintenance contractor declaring the equipment they service as compliant has a commercial incentive that conflicts with the inspection's purpose.

That independence matters more in care homes than in most settings, because the equipment lifts vulnerable residents. A hoist that quietly drifts out of safe operating limits, a sling that gets re-issued past its discard criteria, a stairlift rail with progressive wear — the consequences fall on residents and staff, not on the inspector who signed off the last report.

We don't sell maintenance, slings, or replacement parts. We don't accept commission from suppliers. Our only commercial output is the report — which means our incentive is to identify defects accurately, not to overlook them. CQC inspectors and insurer auditors recognise the independence pattern; the more separation between maintenance and examination, the cleaner the compliance evidence reads.

How we work with multi-site care groups

For care home groups operating multiple homes — particularly across Kent, London, Essex and the South East — the inspection programme is structured around a few practical principles:

• Coordinated scheduling. Examination dates are planned across the group rather than site-by-site, which lets engineer days be routed efficiently and reduces the administrative load on operations managers.
• Consistent reporting format. Every site receives the same report structure, the same defect categorisation, and the same photographic evidence standard. That makes aggregating compliance evidence across the group straightforward.
• Single point of contact. One named contact at EIS for the group, regardless of which site is being scheduled or which report is being chased.
• Fixed annual contracts for predictable populations. Where the equipment register is stable across the year, we quote a fixed annual contract value covering the planned examinations — itemised by site so each home's cost is visible, and equipment additions during the year are priced at the agreed per-item rate rather than a higher one-off rate.
• Multi-site examination economics. Per-item rates fall as item count and site count rise, because the engineer's travel and setup time spreads across more equipment. For a multi-site care group, that volume effect sits inside the per-item rate.

We don't make claims about onboarding timeframes, retainer SLAs, or 24/7 attendance models that aren't built into how we actually work. Multi-site examination is real; specific operational SLAs around it are quoted case by case.

Frequently asked questions

Looking for the regulatory deep-dive? See our LOLER for care homes guide for the detailed compliance framework, CQC alignment, and statutory background. For the broader equipment inspection regime see lifting equipment inspections and passenger and goods lifts.