How Often to PAT Test? Let Your Risk Assessment Decide

"How often do we have to do this?" is the question we're asked more than any other, and the honest answer disappoints people, because they want a number and the law doesn't give one. What it gives you instead is more useful, and considerably cheaper, once you know how to use it.

There is no legal interval. Really.

The HSE could not be clearer: the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 do not make annual testing a legal requirement. The duty is to maintain equipment so as to prevent danger. How you achieve that is for you to determine, which is why the guidance is built around a risk-based approach rather than a calendar.

Annual testing became the default because it's easy to sell and easy for you to remember, not because anybody legislated it. Nobody sat down with your building and worked it out. For some of your equipment it's about right. For some it's far too infrequent. For a lot of it, it's money you needn't spend.

The three questions that set an interval

How hard does it work? A kettle boiled forty times a day, a vacuum dragged round a building, a power tool on a site: these take real punishment and their leads fail. A monitor that has sat on the same desk since 2021 does not.

Does it move? Movement is what damages equipment. Anything unplugged, coiled, carried, wheeled or trodden on needs more attention than anything fixed in place.

Who uses it, and where? Equipment used by the public, by children, by people who can't easily report a fault, or in wet, hot or dirty conditions, all justify shorter intervals. A hairdryer in a salon and a hairdryer in a stockroom are different risks.

What that looks like in practice

Your register stops being one list on one cycle and becomes two or three groups. The hard-worked, moved, plugged-and-unplugged kit on a short interval. Everything else on a longer one. Anything double-insulated, static and lightly used on the longest, with a visual check in between.

Write down why. Employers with five or more employees must record the significant findings of their risk assessment; for smaller employers, a short written explanation is still a useful way to show how the schedule was set. If an inspector or an insurer ever asks how you arrived at your intervals, "our contractor said annual" is a weak answer and "here's our assessment" is a strong one.

The catch, and it's a real one

Longer intervals only work if the in-between is covered. That means user checks: your staff looking at the lead and plug before use, and a route for reporting damage that doesn't involve filling in a form. Stretch the intervals without that, and you've not been clever, you've just tested less.

We'd rather build you a schedule that shrinks over time than sell you the same list every year. If your invoice is identical three years running, nobody has looked at your risk since the first visit. There's more on how it works on our PAT testing page.

Get in touch

Want your intervals worked out properly instead of inherited? Get in touch and we'll go through your equipment with you.