Never let a 6 or 12-month examination lapse. Lolerflow tracks every asset and fires reminders automatically.
Start free trialMost examination overruns happen not because companies are negligent, but because tracking 6-month and 12-month intervals across hundreds of assets in a spreadsheet is genuinely difficult. Dates drift. Accessories get missed.
Lolerflow removes the burden entirely. The system knows every asset interval, calculates the next due date from the last examination, and fires reminders without any manual input.
Under Regulation 9 of LOLER 1998, lifting equipment must be thoroughly examined at intervals specified in the regulations, or, where an examination scheme exists, at the intervals set out in that scheme. For equipment used to lift people (passenger lifts, MEWPs, scissor lifts) and for lifting accessories (slings, chains, shackles), the interval is 6 months. For all other lifting equipment (overhead cranes, forklifts, goods lifts), the interval is 12 months.
A missed or late examination is not simply an administrative oversight, it is a breach of the regulations. The HSE can issue improvement notices, prohibition notices (requiring the equipment to be taken out of service immediately), or prosecute under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Fines are unlimited in the Crown Court, and the HSE charges a Fee for Intervention of £163 per hour for the time spent investigating non-compliance. Read more about LOLER penalties and fines.
For inspection companies responsible for scheduling examinations on behalf of clients, a single missed date can result in the client's equipment being taken out of service, damaging your professional reputation and the client relationship. Automated reminders are not a convenience feature; they are a compliance safeguard.
When an inspector submits a thorough examination report in Lolerflow, the system automatically calculates the next due date based on the equipment type and its configured interval. This happens without any manual input, no spreadsheet formulas, no calendar entries, no reliance on memory.
Many inspection companies start with a spreadsheet to track examination dates. This works when you have 20 assets across 3 clients. It stops working when you have 200 assets across 30 clients with a mix of 6-month and 12-month intervals. The common failure modes are well documented:
Lolerflow eliminates all of these failure points. Every asset is tracked from the moment it is created, intervals are set automatically by equipment type, and reminders fire whether anyone remembers to check or not. For a detailed comparison, see 5 problems with managing LOLER on Excel.
HSE enforcement data consistently shows that missed and overdue examination dates are among the most common grounds for LOLER improvement notices. When an HSE inspector visits a workplace and finds lifting equipment that has passed its examination due date, whether by days or months, an improvement notice is typically issued. For dutyholders who cannot demonstrate any system for tracking due dates, the response moves from an improvement notice to a prohibition notice, taking the equipment out of service with immediate effect.
Prosecution under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and LOLER 1998 follows when overdue examinations are found in the context of an accident investigation. If a worker is injured by a piece of lifting equipment that was overdue for examination, the overdue status becomes evidence of negligence. The dutyholder cannot claim they did not know, they are legally required to maintain an examination schedule and ensure it is followed.
Automated reminders in Lolerflow do something that spreadsheets cannot: they create a documented audit trail of due-diligence activity. Every reminder sent is logged, who was notified, when, for which asset. If an examination is overdue and an incident occurs, Lolerflow's records can show that the dutyholder was informed of the approaching due date, demonstrating that there was a system in place and the failure was operational rather than systemic. For inspection companies managing examinations on behalf of clients, this trail also protects them: it shows that they fulfilled their notification obligations, even if the client failed to act on them.
Automated reminders are one part of Lolerflow's end-to-end LOLER compliance workflow. When a reminder triggers and the examination is carried out, the inspector completes the inspection using the mobile app, generates a Schedule 1 compliant report instantly, and the next due date is recalculated automatically. The entire cycle is hands-off, no spreadsheet updates, no manual date calculations, no risk of human error.
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