Who Does LOLER Apply To? Dutyholders, Employers and Self-Employed Explained

Does LOLER apply to you?

If you provide or control lifting equipment at work, LOLER applies to you. It does not matter whether you are a large company or a sole trader. It does not matter how often the equipment is used. Any employer or self-employed person who provides lifting equipment for use at work carries LOLER duties. The full set of obligations is set out in our LOLER compliance guide.

The HSE LOLER overview confirms that duties fall on employers, the self-employed, and any person who has control of lifting equipment or the people who use it. You might be a company, a sole trader, a facilities manager, or a hire company. The duty follows control of the equipment.

Which industries are covered by LOLER?

Who is legally responsible when something goes wrong?

LOLER uses the term duty holder to describe the person or organisation responsible for ensuring compliance. The duty holder is typically the employer. But where equipment is hired, leased, or used by contractors, the person who has control of the equipment at the time of use carries the LOLER duties for that use. This means:

• If you hire out lifting equipment, you are responsible for ensuring it was properly examined before hire.
• If you use hired equipment, you are responsible for ensuring it was properly examined before you used it.
• If a contractor uses your lifting equipment on your site, both you as site operator and the contractor may have duties.
• If you are self-employed and own your own lifting equipment, you are the duty holder.

Does LOLER apply if you only have one or two pieces of equipment?

Yes. No exceptions. LOLER has no minimum headcount or company size threshold. A sole trader with a single chain hoist carries the same LOLER obligations as a major construction company with hundreds of assets. The only exemption is for domestic use: lifting equipment used in a private home for personal, non-commercial purposes falls outside LOLER scope. The moment it is used for work purposes, LOLER applies.

What equipment is actually covered?

LOLER covers all equipment used at work for lifting or lowering loads, including people. The range is broad: from heavy industrial cranes to small manually operated hoists. Common examples include:

• Cranes: overhead travelling cranes, mobile cranes, tower cranes, jib cranes
• Forklifts and all lifting attachments (forks, booms, man-baskets)
• MEWPs, cherry pickers, scissor lifts, boom lifts, spider lifts, vehicle-mounted platforms
• Passenger lifts, goods lifts, goods-and-persons lifts, and platform lifts
• Patient hoists, ceiling track hoists, and bath hoists in healthcare and care settings
• Window cleaning cradles and building maintenance gondolas when occupied
• Vehicle inspection ramps (two-post, four-post, scissor ramps) in garages and workshops
• Chain hoists and manual chain blocks
• All lifting accessories: chains, wire rope slings, webbing slings, shackles, hooks, eyebolts, spreader beams, swivels

What does the person you appoint actually have to do?

You appoint a competent person to carry out thorough examinations. That competent person must be independent of the lifting operation, have relevant knowledge and experience, and produce a Schedule 1-compliant examination report after every examination. The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) provides guidance on competency standards and accreditation for inspection companies operating in this field.

The examination report must state whether the equipment is safe to continue in use or whether a defect has been found. Where a dangerous defect is identified, the duty holder must be notified immediately and the relevant enforcing authority must receive a copy of the report. This audit trail requirement sits with the duty holder, not the inspection company alone. You cannot outsource that responsibility.

What happens if you do not comply with LOLER?

LOLER is enforced by the HSE and, in some cases, local authorities. In a magistrates court, fines for health and safety offences can reach £20,000 per offence. In the Crown Court, there is no upper limit. In the most serious cases involving fatalities or gross negligence, custodial sentences are available.

Short of prosecution, the HSE can issue Improvement Notices (requiring compliance by a specific date) and Prohibition Notices (requiring immediate cessation of unsafe activities). Failure to arrange thorough examination of lifting equipment is consistently one of the most common LOLER breaches identified in HSE investigations. See a full breakdown of LOLER penalties and fines for specific figures.

How do you stay on top of LOLER across multiple sites?

If you operate across more than one site, LOLER compliance becomes a logistical problem quickly. A company managing ten sites might have hundreds of individual assets, each with its own examination interval, competent person, and record trail. Due dates multiply fast. A single missed examination is a compliance gap, not an oversight.

Spreadsheets are widely used for this purpose, but they have real limitations. No reminders. No audit trail of changes. Manual updating every time an examination is completed.

Purpose-built LOLER inspection software centralises all assets, examinations, and reports in one place. Automated reminders fire before anything goes overdue. Historical records are available instantly. For multi-site operators, the practical benefit is a real-time compliance dashboard showing exactly which assets are current and which are approaching their examination date.

Common questions about LOLER scope