This is genuinely one of the most common questions we get asked, and the honest answer surprises a lot of people: there’s no fixed legal rule that says appliances must be PAT tested every 12 months, or on any other single interval. The idea of a mandatory annual test is one of the most persistent myths in electrical compliance – the actual guidance is risk-based, and it’s worth understanding how that works so you’re not over-testing low-risk kit or, worse, under-testing higher-risk equipment.
There’s No Single Legal Interval
The relevant law – principally the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, backed by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 – simply requires that electrical equipment likely to cause injury is maintained in a safe condition. It doesn’t specify how often testing should happen or in what form. That’s deliberate: a laptop dragged between meeting rooms every day faces a completely different level of risk to a printer that sits untouched in the corner of an office, and treating them identically would mean wasting time on the printer and potentially under-checking the laptop.
The Risk-Based Approach
The standard industry guidance is the IET Code of Practice for In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment, now in its 5th edition, which sets out a risk assessment approach based on the type of equipment, how it’s used, its environment, and who’s using it. In practice, that breaks down roughly like this:
Low Risk: Office IT Equipment
Desktop PCs, monitors and other equipment that rarely moves and is used by careful staff in a clean office environment sit at the low-risk end. These commonly go on extended intervals – often a combined inspection and test every two to four years, sometimes longer, with more frequent simple visual checks in between.
Low-to-Medium Risk: Portable Office Equipment
Laptops, kettles, and other equipment that gets moved and handled more often sit slightly higher up the risk scale, usually warranting inspection and testing on a shorter interval than static IT kit – commonly annually for the more mobile items, though again this should be based on how the equipment is actually used, not applied blindly.
Medium Risk: Schools and Public-Facing Environments
Where equipment is used by a wide range of people, including the public or pupils rather than trained staff, a more frequent inspection regime is generally warranted because there’s less control over how carefully the equipment is handled.
Medium-to-High Risk: Industrial Environments
Equipment used on a factory floor or in an industrial setting faces harsher conditions – dust, moisture, physical knocks – and generally needs both more frequent visual checks and more frequent full testing.
High Risk: Construction Sites
Site equipment takes the most punishment of all, and the guidance reflects that: frequent user checks, regular visual inspection, and formal testing as often as every three months for some equipment types.
What This Means for Your Business
The right approach is to have a competent person assess your specific equipment and environment, set sensible intervals based on that assessment, and then adjust over time based on what testing actually finds. If equipment keeps passing with no defects, intervals can reasonably be extended. If faults start showing up, they should be shortened. A blanket annual test for everything, regardless of what it is or how it’s used, isn’t what the guidance recommends – it’s simply the easiest rule of thumb to remember, which is why it’s stuck around despite not being accurate.
Getting a Sensible Testing Schedule in Place
If you’re not sure where your equipment sits on that scale, or you’ve inherited a testing regime from a previous facilities arrangement and aren’t sure it’s right for your business, we can assess your equipment and set a proper risk-based schedule rather than defaulting to “test everything every year.” See our PAT testing service for how we approach this for businesses across Manchester, Cheshire and the North West.
Get in touch and we’ll take a look at what you’ve got and recommend intervals that actually make sense for your workplace.