LOLER ACOP L113 explained: what it is and its legal status
L113 is the Approved Code of Practice for LOLER 1998. What an ACOP's special legal status means, what L113 covers that the regulations do not, and how the current HSE review may change it.
By Hovermarks team
Quick answer. L113, "Safe use of lifting equipment", is the Approved Code of Practice and guidance for LOLER 1998, published by HSE. The current edition dates from 2014 (with 2018 amendments). An ACOP has special legal status: following it is not itself the law, but if you are prosecuted and did not follow the ACOP, a court will find you at fault unless you can show you complied with the regulation equally well another way. HSE ran a Call for Evidence in late 2025 reviewing LOLER, so L113 may see revision.
Duty holders read the LOLER regulations and find them short. Fifteen regulations, a schedule, and a great deal left unsaid: what counts as adequate strength, what a competent person looks like in practice, how intervals should be judged. The answers live in L113, and understanding what kind of document L113 is matters as much as what it says.
What an ACOP is
An Approved Code of Practice is guidance with teeth. Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, an ACOP approved by HSE has a special status in court:
- Following the ACOP is strong evidence of compliance with the underlying regulation.
- If you did not follow the ACOP and are prosecuted for breaching the regulation it supports, the court will find the regulation breached unless you can demonstrate you complied in some other, equally effective way.
That reversal of the practical burden is what separates an ACOP from ordinary guidance. HSE guidance leaflets are advice. An ACOP is the benchmark a court starts from.
L113 bundles three layers in one document: the text of the LOLER regulations themselves, the ACOP paragraphs (the part with special status), and plain guidance paragraphs. The document distinguishes them typographically, and the distinction matters when you are deciding what is mandatory-in-effect versus advisory.
What L113 adds to the bare regulations
The regulations set duties; L113 makes them usable. The most-consulted areas:
- Competent person. The regulations never define one. L113 describes the attributes: appropriate practical and theoretical knowledge and experience of the equipment, plus enough independence and impartiality for objective decisions. This is the paragraph that pushes most duty holders toward third-party examiners rather than the fitter who maintains the equipment.
- Thorough examination scope. What a thorough examination involves for different equipment classes, and how it differs from routine inspection and from maintenance.
- Intervals and written schemes. How the default 6-month and 12-month intervals interact with a written scheme of examination, and what the competent person drawing one up should weigh.
- Positioning and installation. Practical measures for reducing risks from equipment position: crush points, travel paths, proximity hazards.
- Organisation of lifting operations. Planning, supervision, and the person appointed to plan lifts.
The 2014 edition and the 2025-2026 review
The current L113 is the second edition, published December 2014, amended 2018. It replaced the original 1998 publication and simplified the structure.
The live development: HSE ran a Call for Evidence from 1 October to 11 November 2025 reviewing both LOLER and the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations, with the stated aim of simplifying and streamlining regulatory processes while maintaining standards. Outcomes are pending through 2026. A revision of LOLER would almost certainly bring a revised L113 with it.
What that means practically for a duty holder today: nothing changes until it changes. The 1998 regulations and the 2014 ACOP remain fully in force. But if your compliance documentation cites specific paragraph numbers of L113, note them as "L113 (2014, amended 2018)" so future revisions are easy to reconcile, and expect examination-interval and record-keeping questions to be areas the review looks at. We cover the review itself in more depth in the HSE LOLER review: what could change.
Using L113 defensively
Three habits turn L113 from a shelf document into protection:
- Map your procedures to ACOP paragraphs. Where your lifting procedures follow L113, say so in the procedure. If an incident ever reaches an interview under caution, "our procedure implements L113 paragraph X" is the strongest opening position available.
- Document any departure. If you comply with a regulation by a route the ACOP does not describe, write down what you do and why it is at least as effective. The ACOP's legal status means the burden of that explanation falls on you.
- Keep the evidence that the procedure ran. A procedure aligned to L113 with no records that it was followed protects nobody. The record-keeping rules and the reports themselves are the proof.
Where Hovermarks fits
Hovermarks templates encode the L113-aligned workflow: thorough examinations recorded against Schedule 1's required fields, intervals tracked per asset with written-scheme overrides, and an evidence trail per examination. The LOLER inspection guide collects the full set of LOLER resources in one place.