Posted By Colan Ash At my Hospital, we provide accomadation for staff, some of which is rented, some provided free as part of job. What are the legal obligations on the Trust in terms of inspecting/testing their personal electrical equipment. I know HSE guidance for hotels says this is not required for guests, but would this apply to this employee accomadation?

Posted By Lance Morgan As an addendum Although you say hotels are not required to perform PAT I think they would be taking quite a risk if they did not do so. Most reputable hotels do perform this testing on TV's, Kettles etc that they provide in their rooms. Regards Lance

Posted By Roger Smith Strictly speaking, legislation requires you to provide safe and well maintained electrical equipment rather than to perform regular PAT tests. However, unless you actually perform the tests from time to time,then it is impossible to verify that your supply and maintenance procedures are actually working. You are correct that most Hotels will have tested the kettle, radio and TV etc that they supply in rooms. They will not have tested the equipment supplied by their guests. You should test periodically all of the equipment supplied by you for the use of the occupant. However, the Occupants own electrical equipment may be faulty or draw too much current for the circuits. At best this may result in blown fuses, more seriously, it could mean electrocution and fires. To reduce the risk of this, you could do one or more of the following.... 1 Inspect and test your staff's personal electrical equipment before permitting its use. 2 Fit all sockets in the room with Residual Current Devices. 3 Fit non standard sockets in the room to prevent additional equipment being used. 4 Ban the use of all (or certain types of) personal electrical equipment. What is reasonable will depend a lot upon the number of rooms, the sort of problems that you are already experiencing and the result of your risk assessments. Roger Smith

Posted By Stephen Gallagher Colan, We have much the same problem re our residential homes and are considering training & supplying local managers with the PAC 500 SP. By having test equipment available locally any 'personal' electrical equipment brought brought 'on-site' can then be tested at the earliest opportunity and entered on to the 'PAT register' (no... its not an Irish census form !!!!!) Stevie