HSE guidance states that the person who services a lift should not carry out its thorough examination, because that is assessing their own work. Semi comprehensive is not defined by any standard or public procurement document. Check the examination split, obsolescence cover, entrapment response times and who holds the controller software. Twelve checks and the questions to ask are below.
Lift procurement has a structural problem that no other compliance discipline shares. The same firm usually sells you the maintenance, the thorough examination, the repairs it identifies and the modernisation it eventually recommends, and it holds the diagnostic tools you would need to check any of it. That is why the checks below weigh independence more heavily than the equivalent checks for fire or water.
Two regulations sit behind the money. Regulation 5 of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 requires work equipment to be maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair, and that is the maintenance contract. Regulation 9(3) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 requires a thorough examination at least every six months for equipment that lifts persons and at least every twelve months for other lifting equipment, and that is a separate discipline. Regulation 6(5) of PUWER expressly disapplies the PUWER inspection regime to lifting equipment, so the two do not overlap. The difference between LOLER and PUWER for lifts is set out in full separately.
HSE is direct about who should do the examination. Its guidance states that the competent person "should be sufficiently independent and impartial to make objective decisions", and that the competent person "should not be the same person who performs routine maintenance as they would be responsible for assessing their own work". That is advice, not law. No instrument makes independence mandatory. Public buyers act on it anyway. The Fusion21 lifts framework separates LOLER thorough examinations into their own lot, procured from a different supplier list from servicing and maintenance.
Check the firm
1. Accreditation, and who awards it. For the examination, the meaningful accreditation is UKAS accreditation to ISO/IEC 17020 as an inspection body. UKAS states that this demonstrates the technical competence of organisations to perform inspections and that the inspection body operates independently and impartially. All Safety Assessment Federation full member companies are UKAS accredited to ISO 17020. Ask: "Are you UKAS accredited to ISO/IEC 17020, and are you a Type A, B or C body?" Worry if the answer skips the type. UKAS is clear that the three types are equivalent in status, but only Type A is independent from the parties involved in the inspection, so the type tells you what the accreditation does and does not prove about conflict.
2. Whether the scheme scope matches your equipment. Lift and Escalator Industry Association membership requires audited accounts for at least three years, certification by a UKAS accredited body to ISO 9001 and to ISO 45001 or BS OHSAS 18001, and appropriate insurance. That is a company level check on financial stability and management systems. It is not an assessment of the engineer attending your site, and it is not inspection body accreditation. Ask: "Which of your accreditations covers the engineer who attends, and which covers only the company?" Worry if a single logo is offered as the answer to both questions.
3. The competence of the individual who attends. The relevant apprenticeship standard is Level 3 lift and escalator engineering. Beyond that there is no register of individual lift engineers equivalent to the fire risk assessor registers. Ask: "Who is the named engineer for my sites, what is their qualification, and who covers when they are away?" Worry if the firm cannot name the engineer, or if release of trapped passengers is treated as something anyone on site can do. Croydon Council's published policy states that only the appointed competent lift engineers or the fire and rescue service may free trapped passengers, and NHS guidance in Health Technical Memorandum 08-02 defines a lift release warden as a person suitably trained and qualified by knowledge and practical experience.
Check the delivery
4. Capacity and the real lead time. Ask: "How many engineers do you have inside my travel area, what is your callout coverage out of hours, and what is your current first fix rate?" Worry if the engineer count is national rather than local, because a lift stuck on a Friday night is a local resource question.
5. Coverage across a multi-site portfolio. Ask: "Which of my sites fall inside your direct engineer coverage, and which would be covered by a subcontractor?" Worry if response times are quoted as a single national figure with no regional variation, since that is rarely how the engineer bench actually works.
6. Response and entrapment times, and where they came from. No standard sets a national entrapment attendance figure. Published contracts do, and they are the only defensible benchmarks available to a buyer.
| Published requirement | Entrapment attendance | Other response times |
|---|---|---|
| Fusion21 lifts specification, Lot 1 | 1 hour, in and out of hours, 24 hours a day, every day | Standard call 3 hours in hours, 5 hours out of hours |
| Croydon Council lift safety policy, November 2024 | Within 1 hour of notification | Not stated in the policy |
| New Forest District Council policy HLSPOL04, June 2025 | Contract agreement within 2 hours | Not stated in the policy |
Ask: "What is your contractual entrapment attendance time, in hours, in and out of hours, and what is the remedy if you miss it?" Worry if the answer is "as soon as possible", or if the response time carries no consequence.
Check the contract
7. What the contract actually covers, in the contractor's own component list. Published public sector specifications define only two contract types. Fusion21 defines comprehensive, and defines basic as no materials costs included within the contract. Semi comprehensive appears in no standard, no trade body publication and no public procurement document we could find, which means it is a contractor coined term with no fixed meaning. Ask: "List every component excluded from the contract price, by name." Worry if the answer is a category such as major components, because ropes, controllers, drive units, door operators and hydraulic rams are where the money is. The comparison of lift maintenance contract types sets out the trade offs in detail.
8. Obsolescence, and who carries it. This is the single largest hidden cost in a lift contract. The Fusion21 specification handles it in one sentence: "The Contractor shall include for the replacement of any parts throughout the term of the contract with no exclusions for obsolescence. Any parts that are deemed obsolete during the Contract term shall be replaced with a modern equivalent at no extra cost." Ask: "Is obsolescence excluded, and if a part is unavailable, who pays for the modern equivalent?" Worry if obsolescence is excluded on equipment already over twenty years old, because the exclusion will be triggered. Where obsolescence is genuinely near, plan the work rather than the contract, as set out in the lift modernisation planning guide.
9. Controller software and diagnostic tools. We could find no published UK public sector lift specification that addresses ownership of controller software, source code or access to proprietary diagnostic tools, so there is no market norm to point at. That is exactly why you should ask. Ask: "On handover or on termination, do I receive the controller passwords, parameter settings and access to diagnostic tools, and will you write that into the contract?" Worry if the answer is that the tools are proprietary and cannot be shared, because that decides your next tender before you run it.
Check the evidence
10. Examination reports and the record trail. Regulation 10 requires a written authenticated report as soon as is practicable containing the Schedule 1 information, notification of any dangerous defect to you forthwith, and a copy to the enforcing authority where a defect involves an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury. Regulation 11 sets the retention periods. Ask: "Who sends me the report, in what format, and how are defects tracked to closure?" Worry if reports arrive as scanned paper with no defect register. The Fusion21 specification requires remedial works arising from a report within 60 days and immediate defect report notice works closed inside 30 days, which is a reasonable benchmark to hold a contractor to. Failure of a load bearing part of lifting equipment is also a reportable dangerous occurrence under Schedule 2 Part 1 of RIDDOR 2013, so a defect log is not just an asset record.
11. Subcontracting policy, and the standards being worked to. Ask: "Do you subcontract examinations, callouts or repairs, and which edition of BS 7255 do your engineers work to?" The current edition is BS 7255:2023, and the 2012 edition is withdrawn. Public specifications still cite the withdrawn edition, so the question separates firms that track standards from firms that copy old documents.
12. References you can actually check. Ask: "Give me two clients with a comparable lift portfolio and comparable equipment age, whose contracts you have held for at least two years." Worry if every reference is a new contract, because lift contracts look excellent in year one and expose themselves in year four when the first major component fails.
Where the four nations differ
LOLER 1998, PUWER 1998 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 apply identically in England, Wales and Scotland, and HSE is the regulator throughout. Northern Ireland has separate instruments with materially identical text: the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999 and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999, regulated by HSENI. Northern Ireland did not adopt the 2013 rewrite of RIDDOR and still works to the 1997 Northern Ireland regulations, so a portfolio spanning the Irish Sea should not assume the same reporting schedule paragraph numbers.
Turning twelve answers into a decision
Score each firm out of two on every check. The pattern that separates providers is not price in year one. It is the obsolescence position, the controller software answer, and whether the thorough examination has been carved out to an independent inspection body. Managing agents carrying lifts inside a service charge should read this alongside the compliance obligations of managing agents and the wider contractor vetting and accreditation guide, because a lift contract signed without an obsolescence answer becomes a service charge dispute later. The LOLER thorough examination guide covers the examination itself.
Running these checks across a market is what we do
TICDesk is a matching desk. You submit one brief describing what your buildings need. We approach credible firms anonymously with that scope and area, check accreditation, insurance, capacity and coverage, and return a match pack of three confirmed firms within 48 hours. It is free to you, there is no obligation, and your identity is not shared with any firm until you approve it. If a strong firm responds late, we flag it in a second wave. We are paid by the supply side, not by you. We do not maintain or examine lifts ourselves. The lifts service line sets out what we cover.
Frequently asked
Can the company that maintains my lift also carry out the LOLER thorough examination?
Nothing in law prevents it, but HSE advises against it. HSE guidance states that the competent person should be sufficiently independent and impartial to make objective decisions, and should not be the same person who performs routine maintenance as they would be responsible for assessing their own work. Public buyers act on this. Fusion21 procures LOLER thorough examinations under a separate framework lot from servicing and maintenance.
How often must a passenger lift be thoroughly examined?
Regulation 9(3) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 requires lifting equipment for lifting persons to be thoroughly examined at least every six months, other lifting equipment at least every twelve months, or in accordance with an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person. An examination is also required each time exceptional circumstances liable to jeopardise safety have occurred.
What is the difference between a comprehensive and a basic lift maintenance contract?
Published public sector specifications define only two. Fusion21 defines comprehensive, and basic as no materials costs included within the contract. Semi comprehensive appears in no standard, trade body publication or public procurement document that we could find, so it means whatever the contractor drafting it says it means. If a quote uses the term, ask for the excluded component list in writing.
How quickly should a contractor attend a lift entrapment?
No standard or HSE guidance sets a national figure. Published contracts do. The Fusion21 lifts specification requires attendance at an entrapment within one hour, in and out of normal hours, and Croydon Council's lift safety policy states the maintenance contractor will attend within one hour of notification. New Forest District Council's policy states two hours. Treat these as contractual benchmarks rather than an industry standard.
What must the thorough examination report contain?
Regulation 10 of LOLER requires a written authenticated report as soon as is practicable, containing the information in Schedule 1. That includes the date of the last thorough examination, the safe working load, which category under regulation 9(3) applies, any defect that is or could become a danger, the timescale for repair, the date of the next examination, and the examiner's name, address and qualifications.
Sources & further reading
