What Is PUWER? The Work Equipment Regulations Explained

Work equipment is any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation used at work. The definition is deliberately wide. In a warehouse or yard it takes in:

• forklifts, reach trucks, order pickers, pallet trucks, stackers and tow tractors
• scissor lifts, cherry pickers and other access platforms
• scrubber dryers, sweepers and pressure washers
• pallet racking, conveyors, battery chargers and workshop equipment
• ladders, hand tools and power tools

It covers equipment the business owns, hires or leases, and equipment employees bring to work with permission. A hired-in forklift is work equipment from the moment it arrives on site.

The duties fall on employers, on the self-employed, and on anyone who has control of work equipment or of the way it is used: a site operator who lets contractors use its trucks, for example, or a business that manages a shared yard. Employees have duties of their own under health and safety law to use equipment as they have been instructed and to report defects.

PUWER does not apply to equipment sold to the public for their own use. It is about equipment provided for work.

The regulations are short and practical. The ones that matter most day to day are:

• Suitability (regulation 4). The equipment is right for the job and the place it is used. A counterbalance truck on rough ground, or a machine with no rating for the load, fails this before anything breaks.
• Maintenance (regulation 5). Equipment is kept in an efficient state, in working order and in good repair. Where a machine has a maintenance log, the log is kept up to date.
• Inspection (regulation 6). Where safety depends on how equipment is installed, it is inspected after installation and before first use. Where it is exposed to conditions that cause deterioration, it is inspected at suitable intervals and after anything exceptional, by a competent person, with the result recorded.
• Information and training (regulations 8 and 9). The people who use, supervise or manage the use of the equipment have the information, instructions and training for it, including the risks and the precautions to take.
• Guarding, controls and stability (regulations 11 to 20). Dangerous parts are guarded; start, stop and emergency stop controls are clear and work; the equipment can be isolated from its power source; it is stable.
• Lighting, markings and warnings (regulations 21 to 24). Enough light to work safely, and the markings and warning devices the equipment needs, such as a horn, beacon or rated capacity.

There is no list of approved machines and no single PUWER certificate. The test is whether the equipment is suitable, maintained, inspected and used by people who know how, and whether the business can show it.

Part III of PUWER deals with mobile work equipment, and it reads as if it were written with lift trucks in mind. It covers:

• Carrying people. Nobody rides on mobile equipment unless it is designed for it, with a seat or a safe place to stand and protection from falling out.
• Rolling over. Where there is a risk of a machine rolling over, that risk is minimised with stabilisers, a rollover protective structure and a restraint, so that the operator is not crushed.
• Overturning of forklift trucks. A forklift carrying an operator is adapted or equipped to reduce the risk from overturning, which in practice means a protective structure and a seat belt or other restraint that is worn.
• Self-propelled equipment. Brakes that work and a means of stopping, adequate vision for the driver, lighting for work in the dark, and protection against unauthorised starting.

For a forklift, PUWER is therefore the regulation behind the brakes, the steering, the tyres, the lights and horn, the seat and seat belt, the overhead guard and the daily pre-use check. Our guide to the forklift seat belt and restraint system covers the overturning point in detail.

LOLER, the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, covers equipment that lifts or lowers loads or people, and the lifting operations themselves. PUWER covers all work equipment. So lifting equipment comes under both: LOLER for the lifting function, PUWER for everything else.

On a forklift that splits neatly. The forks, carriage, chains, mast and hydraulics are LOLER.

The brakes, steering, tyres, lights, guarding and seat are PUWER. LOLER sets fixed intervals for the thorough examination of the lifting side: 12 months for a standard forklift, 6 months where the machine lifts people.

PUWER sets no fixed interval; it asks for maintenance and inspection suited to the equipment and how hard it works.

Our LOLER regulations guide covers the lifting duties in full, and LOLER, thorough examination, PUWER and a service sets all four side by side.

A PUWER inspection is a check, by a competent person, that the equipment is in a safe condition and that any deterioration is found and put right before it causes harm. How often depends on the equipment, how it is used and the conditions it works in: a truck on a double shift in a cold store needs closer attention than one that moves a few pallets a week.

For a forklift the practical answer is the CFTS Thorough Examination. On our examinations items 1 to 10 are the LOLER scope and a full Thorough Examination covers items 1 to 19, adding the PUWER scope: service and parking brakes, steering, tyres and wheels, lights, horn and warning devices, seat and seat belt, and guarding.

One visit and one report cover both regulations. A LOLER-only examination is legitimate, but it leaves the brakes and steering to be covered some other way.

We carry out LOLER inspections and forklift thorough examinations on forklifts, warehouse equipment, access equipment and MEWPs, and lifting accessories, including machines we did not supply. For access platforms, see MEWP servicing and LOLER inspection; for racking, which is work equipment too, see pallet racking inspections.

Between inspections, the pre-use check is what catches a problem on the day it appears: a soft brake, a damaged tyre, a horn that has stopped working. It takes a few minutes at the start of a shift and it is the most direct way of showing that equipment is kept in a safe condition. Our article on pre-shift inspections explains what a good check covers, and the pre-shift inspection course teaches it.

Planned servicing is the maintenance side of the same duty. It is not an inspection and does not replace one, as thorough examination vs service explains, but a machine that is not maintained will not stay in working order and good repair. When a defect is found, our engineers carry out the repair, and we hold over £1 million of forklift parts in UK stock so common defects can be fixed rather than parked.

Regulation 9 deals with training: the people who use, supervise or manage the use of work equipment, and the training they have received in how to use it, the risks it can create and the precautions to take. For lift trucks the usual pattern is operator training for the category of machine, refresher training, and written authorisation by the employer.

We run RTITB accredited operator training at our centres in Purfleet, Chatham and Portsmouth and on customers’ sites, for counterbalance, reach, very narrow aisle and pallet trucks, alongside courses for supervisors and managers. See all our training courses.

PUWER expects the results of inspections to be recorded and kept until the next one is recorded, and equipment moving between businesses, such as a hired machine, to go with evidence of its last inspection. In practice the documents worth being able to produce are:

• the report of thorough examination for each lifting machine, covering LOLER and PUWER
• service records and the maintenance log
• completed daily pre-use check sheets
• training records and written authorisations for each operator

If you are not sure where your fleet stands, am I compliant is a practical self-check, and health, safety and compliance covers the wider duty.

PUWER is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive and, in some workplaces, by local authorities. An inspector can issue an improvement notice, which sets a date by which something must be put right, or a prohibition notice, which stops an activity or a machine straight away. A breach is a criminal offence, and after an accident the first things an inspector asks for are the inspection reports, the maintenance records and the training records.

If you would like a second view of your equipment or your paperwork, contact us or call 01708 861 414. We examine, service and repair forklifts, warehouse equipment, access platforms and cleaning machines from eight depots with our own engineers.