PUWER risk assessment: work equipment assessed as it is actually used

Yes. PUWER 1998 places a duty on employers and the self-employed to ensure work equipment is suitable for its intended use, properly maintained and safe to operate. A risk assessment is how you identify the hazards on each item and the controls needed. Failing to carry one out, or failing to act on it, can bring improvement and prohibition notices, prosecution and personal liability for directors and managers. If an incident happens, you will need to show how the risks from that equipment were assessed and controlled.

Any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation used at work. In practice that covers industrial machinery, powered hand tools, vehicles used at work, access equipment, lifting equipment, woodworking and food processing machines, agricultural plant, and office equipment where a significant risk exists. If an employee uses it as part of the job and it could cause harm, PUWER almost certainly applies.

PUWER is the risk assessment framework covering all work equipment: whether it is suitable, guarded, controlled and maintained. LOLER 1998 applies specifically to lifting equipment such as cranes, hoists, fork-lift trucks and patient lifts, and requires a statutory thorough examination by a competent person at set intervals. Those thorough examinations are usually carried out by a specialist third party, often an insurer's engineer. York Green carries out the PUWER risk assessment. Where your lifting equipment also needs thorough examination, we will tell you and help you find a provider.

Yes. Marking tells you the manufacturer assessed the equipment against the applicable standards at the point of manufacture. It says nothing about how the equipment is used in your workplace, the environment it sits in, how it interfaces with other machines and processes, or how your operators work around it. PUWER puts those workplace-specific questions on the employer. Marking is a useful starting point for an assessment, not a substitute for one.

It depends on what was found. Minor issues such as a missing guard, a damaged control or overdue maintenance can usually be put right without taking the machine out of service, provided interim controls are in place. More serious findings, such as a fundamental guarding failure or equipment that is unsuitable for its intended use, may mean taking it out of service until it is remedied. The report sets out a prioritised action plan and we walk you through what is urgent and what can be planned in.

PUWER sets no fixed interval, but requires review whenever there is reason to think the assessment is no longer valid. That means when equipment is modified, moved or used differently, after an accident or near miss involving it, when the people using it change including new or inexperienced workers, or when new information about the hazards comes to light. Beyond those triggers, set your own review interval to match the risk the equipment carries and how often it changes.

A competent person: someone with the knowledge, training, experience and skill to identify and assess the risks from work equipment. For simple, low-risk equipment a trained in-house person may be enough. For complex or high-risk machinery, particularly in manufacturing, food production or construction, an external assessor with specific machinery experience is the sensible choice. Competence is shown through formal qualifications, machinery safety training and a record of assessing similar equipment.

Consultants are based in Cheshire and the West Midlands, and most of our work sits in the corridor between them: Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, the North West and Merseyside, Shropshire and the Midlands, and across into Yorkshire. Beyond that corridor we work nationwide, and have delivered assessments as far as London, Lincoln and the South Coast. Wherever the site is, the price you are quoted after the Greenlight Call is the price.