LOLER thorough examinations: forklifts, MEWPs and tail-lifts
Which equipment needs a thorough examination, the six-month versus twelve-month split, and how long the reports have to be kept.
27 August 2026 · 5 min read
The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 apply to equipment used at work for lifting or lowering loads, including the attachments that anchor, fix or support it. In a warehouse or factory that means more than you might list at first.
What is in scope
- Forklift trucks, reach trucks and order pickers, together with their attachments.
- Mobile elevating work platforms, scissor and boom.
- Overhead cranes, jib cranes, chain hoists and their slings, shackles and eye bolts.
- Vehicle tail-lifts and vehicle-mounted cranes.
- Patient hoists and passenger lifts where relevant.
Six months or twelve
Regulation 9 sets the default intervals where no written scheme of examination exists:
- Six months for equipment used to lift people, and for lifting accessories such as slings, chains and shackles.
- Twelve months for other lifting equipment.
A MEWP lifts people, so it is on six months. A counterbalance forklift moving pallets is on twelve, unless it is fitted with a working platform to lift people, in which case it is six. A tail-lift used to lift goods is twelve months; the same tail-lift used with a person on the platform moves to six.
Who does it
A competent person who is sufficiently independent and impartial to make objective decisions. In practice that is an engineer surveyor from an insurer or an inspection body, not the maintenance contractor who services the truck.
Keeping the reports
Regulation 11 requires the report of thorough examination to be kept until the next report is made, and for two years if it identified a defect. Reports for lifting accessories are kept for two years. If the equipment is sold, the reports go with it.
Where it goes wrong
The common failure is not a missed exam on a piece of equipment everyone knows about. It is the sling in the corner, the chain hoist that lives on a beam, the tail-lift on the trailer that is technically someone else's. These are lifting equipment with the same duties, and they are the items least likely to be on a spreadsheet.
In Safegen, lifting items take a system template with the six-month or twelve-month LOLER interval already set, examinations are recorded against them with the certificate reference and the report file, and the register shows every tracked date on every item in service, legal items first.
