Written schemes of examination under LOLER: when and how to vary intervals

Quick answer. LOLER Regulation 9 sets default thorough-examination intervals: 6 months for lifting accessories and equipment used to lift people, 12 months for other lifting equipment. As an alternative, examinations can follow a written scheme of examination drawn up by a competent person. A scheme can lengthen or shorten intervals based on the equipment's actual risk profile, but it must deliver protection at least equivalent to the defaults, and the competent person who writes it owns that judgement.

Most duty holders run lifting equipment on the default intervals and never think further. For many fleets that is exactly right. But the written scheme is the regulation's built-in flexibility, and there are fleets where using it well saves real money, and fleets where not using it leaves genuine risk unexamined.

What the regulation says

Regulation 9(3) offers two routes for periodic thorough examination:

• The default intervals: at least every 6 months for lifting accessories and for lifting equipment used for lifting persons; at least every 12 months for other lifting equipment; and in each case after exceptional circumstances liable to jeopardise safety.
• Examination in accordance with a written scheme of examination, drawn up by a competent person.

The two routes are alternatives per item of equipment. A fleet can mix them: standard hoists on defaults, a specific high-duty crane on a scheme.

Who can draw up a scheme

The same competence standard as for the examinations themselves, described in ACOP L113: appropriate practical and theoretical knowledge and experience of the equipment, with the independence to make objective judgements. In practice schemes are written by the examining body: an engineer surveyor from your inspection provider or insurer's engineering arm, or an in-house chartered engineer where the organisation is large enough to sustain genuine independence.

The scheme author carries the professional judgement. If an interval a scheme lengthened turns out to have missed a deterioration that a default-interval examination would have caught, the scheme and its reasoning become the centre of the investigation.

What a scheme should contain

L113 does not prescribe a template, but a defensible scheme records:

1. Equipment identification: the specific items covered, individually identified.
2. The examination regime per item: what is examined, how, and at what interval, including any partial examinations between full ones.
3. The reasoning: duty cycle, environment, age, failure history, manufacturer guidance, and why the chosen intervals give protection at least equivalent to the defaults.
4. Review triggers: what causes the scheme itself to be revisited (change of use, incident, modification, relocation).
5. Author and date: who drew it up, their competence basis, and when.

A one-line note saying "examine annually" is not a scheme. The reasoning is the scheme.

When a scheme makes sense

Shortening intervals is the under-used direction. High-cycle equipment in harsh environments (foundry cranes, dockside equipment, hire fleet accessories in constant rotation) can deteriorate faster than a 6-month or 12-month cycle detects. A scheme that examines quarterly is how the competent person formalises that judgement, and it is exactly the kind of risk-based thinking the current HSE review of LOLER may push the whole regime toward.

Lengthening intervals suits genuinely low-duty equipment: the workshop crane used twice a year, the standby davit. The saving is real but bounded, and the evidence bar is on you. Low use must be demonstrable (usage records, not impressions), and the environment benign.

Mixed fleets benefit most. A hire company or multi-site contractor with hundreds of accessories and dozens of machines almost always has both over-examined and under-examined equipment on pure defaults.

The records that make a scheme work

A scheme divorces intervals from the easy-to-remember defaults, which makes tracking unforgiving. Every item on a scheme needs its own next-due date, and the scheme document itself must be retrievable alongside the examination reports (see record keeping under Regulation 11). This is where scheme-based regimes fail in practice: not in the engineering, but in a spreadsheet that no longer matches the fleet.

Where Hovermarks fits

Hovermarks holds intervals per asset, so scheme-varied equipment sits alongside default-interval equipment with each item tracking its own next-due date, and the scheme document attaches to the assets it governs. Overdue examinations chase themselves. The LOLER solution page shows the workflow; the LOLER inspection guide collects the full resource set.