If a client with passenger lifts has a contract with their insurer to carry our Passenger Lift inspections every 6 months, but for whatever reason, the inspections are carried out more than 6 months apart, would the enforcing authority grant them any leeway? In the real world, would a few weeks slippage on timescales be accepted as an unfortunate situation due to the lack of qualified inspectors or similar?

I'd agree with the above post by teh boy, but in a real world it is a bit non-sensicle really. Im not a fan of any 6 month inspection, after all you could inspect it today, an unreported incident could happen tomorrow and it goes 6 months before anyone checks it again? Accidents don't tend to wait until the 6 monthe period is coming to an end unfortunately - if only life was that predictable eh? :-)

Whilst LOLER states 6 monthly, I think the term reasonably practicable comes to mind. Think in terms of the number of items you have that need the STE to be conducted in a timeframe, is it feasible that everything will be tested in 1 day?? Personally speaking, I believe the reasonableness of the inspection can be taken to a small time period of opportunity - 2 weeks after (imho); though, pre-use checks are key too, these still need to be done - this will determine from a visual point of view the equipment's/accessory's ability to conduct the job safely - and this would be done by a competent person!!

Waz, You can't apply reasonably practicable to an absolute duty

Not attempting to challenge Walker's comments about the absolute nature of the duty, he is quite correct. It does however lead to some complications. I used to work for a care charity, and they have numerous hoists with associated tackle for lifting people, very sensitive from a LOLER perspective, as people are killed every year by hoist/sling failures in health and social care settings. The complication is, what does an organisation do when the people contracted to inspect fail to turn up on time? In the winter of 2010 one of their premises had 12 feet of snow in the drive; the hoist engineers couldn't get to the building and by the time they could were so behind that the checks ended up being nearly six weeks late. Not defensible in court maybe, but it's hard to see what we could have done about it, John

Well, ot quote from the same top source 'There must be an urgent and immediate threat to life which creates a situation in which the defendant reasonably believes that a proportionate response to that threat is to break the law', not sure if a snow-bound drive creates an immediate and urgent threat to life ;-) John