Free Tail Lift LOLER Inspection Sheet — Thorough Examination Template

This one isn't arguable. HSE lists 'vehicle tail lifts' by name in Table 1 of INDG422, its employer guide to thorough examination, and the LOLER Approved Code of Practice (L113) names vehicle tail lifts as lifting equipment and uses one as an example of routine lifting operations. So every tail lift in a fleet needs statutory thorough examination by a competent person — the MOT and a service history don't cover it.

• Named in HSE INDG422 Table 1 ('Equipment covered by LOLER') and in the L113 ACOP
• Thorough examination is separate from routine maintenance and from the vehicle's own tests
• The competent person must have the practical and theoretical knowledge and experience of tail lifts to detect defects and judge how much they matter
• They must be sufficiently independent and impartial — in-house examiners are allowed under L113 if they have genuine authority and independence, but the person who maintains the lift should not normally be the one who examines it

The thorough examination isn't the whole regime. LOLER regulation 9(3)(b) requires inspection by a competent person at suitable intervals between thorough examinations where appropriate — HSE describes these as visual and functional checks at regular intervals such as weekly, monthly or quarterly. HSE's tail-lift guidance goes further: many lifts suffer hard use, so a system of routine checks is expected, with any safety defect rectified immediately. PUWER 1998 separately covers maintenance and inspection of the non-lifting parts of the unit.

• Interim inspections where risk assessment identifies significant risk — scope and frequency set by the competent person
• Routine operator checks — industry practice is a documented weekly check plus a pre-use look-over
• Common defect areas: hydraulic hose chafe and leaks, platform cracks and anti-slip wear, loose hinge pins and mounting bolts, holding-valve creep, dead e-stops, illegible decals
• Safety defects get fixed immediately, not noted for the next service

Whatever format your report takes, Schedule 1 fixes its contents — and the sheet carries a field for each particular. The defect section splits findings the way the law does: defects that are a danger to persons now, versus defects that could become one, with the date by which they will.

• Employer name and address, the premises examined at, and equipment identification including date of manufacture where known
• Safe working load — or the SWL for the configuration examined, where it depends on configuration
• Which examination it was: 6-monthly, 12-monthly, under an examination scheme, or after exceptional circumstances
• Defects, the repairs or alterations needed to remedy them, and time limits for developing defects
• Latest date for the next thorough examination, particulars of any test, and the examiner's name, address and qualifications
• Serious defects: the competent person notifies the employer forthwith, then issues the written report — with a copy to the relevant enforcing authority where there's an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury
• L113 guidance: in normal circumstances the written report should reach you within 28 days of the examination

LOLER governs the in-service examination; BS EN 1756 governs how the lift was designed and built. It comes in two parts — one for goods lifts, one for passenger lifts — and recording which standard the lift was built to belongs in the equipment particulars.

• BS EN 1756-1:2021 — tail lifts for goods (current edition, published August 2021, replacing the 2001+A1:2008 version)
• BS EN 1756-2:2004+A1:2009 — tail lifts for passengers (still the current edition as of 2026)
• The operational-test section proves the lift still does what its design standard intended — full travel, level alignment, load held without creep