PAT testing, re test interval?

I have to do the PAT testing at the village hall. What is the re test interval these days?

It's all down to risk assessment now. We do our village hall and we do it annually although we don't quote this as a requirement as no assessment has been done by the client.

Last few times I did it at 5 year intervals, I only asked as the law has changed and some things, e.g. rental properties by law are now every year.

I don't think there is a specified time. It's one of those that says "up to the duty holder to decide in the risk,assessment"

Village hall = multiple unknown users

Must be 1 year imho

No hard and fast rule, the IET completely dropped even any guidelines from the 5th edition as they wanted to leave it completely down to risk assessment and not influence you at all. This is the responsibility of the dutyholder (facility manager etc) who would then by my experience... just delegate it to the competent person doing the inspection and testing (they can have such a person "assist"). It'd also vary per piece of equipment.

IMO as it then ends up down to me, doing the inspection/test and updating the records, I think (because I'm not the IET and I do like to have some kind of rough opinion to share) 1 year is a good safety-minded starting point as a rule of thumb for "the unknown" and then you shorten or lengthen based on other factors. If something is in perfect condition, near new, just... let's say a modern LCD monitor that doesn't get hot sat there on a desk in an office with an IEC lead plugged into it and I don't see any risk of it being bashed around or anything then realistically I think "what's going to happen to it just sat there on a desk mostly encased in plastic and being looked at?" - not a lot so I would tend to give a 3 year pass. Others may be more or less cautious, this is just me as an individual, by my assessment there's no point in pulling everyone's PC setups apart every year if they're just sat there on a desk in an air conditioned environment - to my mind it's an exercise of proving what you already know and slapping a new label on.

The IEC lead itself? (another appliance), that could get mangled between desks and whatnot so maybe I'd say a year if only for a Formal Visual Inspection so you can give them all a regular once over to see if they've been damaged and maybe that would be enough (plugging something into a tester is not a legal requirement in itself and can be on a different schedule)

This is in-house though, where we know what's being moved where. The odd monitor being moved gently from desk A to desk B I wouldn't care about. PC PSU just got changed or we're doing a major Musical Offices exercise and everyone is in a hurry moving things around, I'd put everything moved through a retest as a matter of course. An unknown such as testing another company's equipment where I don't know what their Musical Offices routine is like? Maybe then I'd stick to a year.

Some old electrically powered hand drill being thrown around all day every day? 6 months, maybe even less. Heavy usage, high vibration, hand held, age, rough handling etc etc are all factors.

As the above poster says, in this case with multiple unknown users and members of the public involved etc I'd take that as an obvious shortening factor. With some items on balance I'd say yeah I'd stick to my "default" of 1 year as maybe the public access makes little to no difference. Some item like a ceiling projector that no one can reach I'd probably not take the village hall environment as much of a factor at all (unless it has an obvious leaky roof anyway) and stick with a longer interval like 2-3 years (what's going to happen to it, who's even going to touch it? It's literally bolted to the ceiling). Something like an old mains powered radio that keeps getting chucked around the village hall by all and sundry? Again, that's where I'd be saying "6 months, maybe even less". At least it's not a drill (+) but it's being handled frequently by the public (-). So it's not just a flat interval for the entire village hall but really depends on each piece of equipment and you'd come back every 6 months or 3 months or however cautious you guide them to be to give the high risk stuff at least a visual inspection and maybe come less frequently with your ladders and whatnot for the less critical items.

I'd also advise the dutyholder based on known usage/location. Let's say they're just letting random members of the public have access to a toaster sat in a box of "village hall stuff" that they can just plug in anywhere? I think I'd honestly refuse to pass it as-is based on "suitability for environment" concerns (sorry but what if some kid sticks their finger in?). Realistically that would become a conversation more like "okay I'll pass it for x months but under the condition that you stop dumping it in a box of stuff and letting randomers pass it around, and instead put it in the kitchen, out of reach of children, and limit access to trusted adults, and I'll write that we agreed to this change in usage/environment in the notes"

Sorry, bit long, overexcited newcomer. I think it's a useful discussion and as I'm still learning myself am very open to other views. I'd be interested to hear a variety of opinions when it comes to assessing test/inspection intervals and would maybe adapt if someone came up with good points I hadn't thought of.

I was involved in the EAWR compliance / PAT in an industrial environment (albeit rather a long time ago) and I have no real disagreement with anything you say. The policy on periodicity, etc, should be clearly defined but I wouldn't see that as part of the tester's job, more a responsibility of the risk assessor.
I don't think you should worry too much about future mis-use and abuse of equipment. Your testing is basically an MOT valid on the day you did it. I would see the suitable for environment judgement at the level of indoor/outdoor/workshop/domestic.
Personal opinions only, and I may well be out of date with current guidance.

Good comments! And maybe you're right there, this scenario is only hypothetical to me (my role is just internal for the company I work for) but maybe in the real world I wouldn't actually be policing how something is going to be (ab)used and insisting they go put it in the kitchen. Other than maybe advising them to think about it.

Also I forgot to add before anyone pulled me on it for not being portable, nowadays "projector bolted to ceiling" does need at least an inspection as it's no longer "portable appliance testing" but now "in-service inspection and testing of electrical equipment" and the contents of the CoP reflect that... but I suspect that everyone who's received training as recently as me has probably been taught to yes be diligent but also that they're allowed to be realistic e.g. say "let's not worry about that item quite as often, because it's not going anywhere and no one is even likely to touch it". That's the mindset I was taught anyway. You're encouraged to use your noggin more rather than "push button, come back next year", and I think they'd rather have that aspect of realism about whether something is reasonable, so that equipment is at least looked at every so often even if it's e.g. every five years rather than a mindset of "it's crazy to look at that once a year so I'm just never going to look at it".

What we did get taught is to think about whether "please just pile all your portable equipment into the middle of this room for testing" is really suitable, because when it's been piled into the middle of a room you don't really know its regular environment. So my thinking was kind of extrapolating from that.

When it comes to doing a risk assessment (from which you can decide on frequency) it's stated as the responsibility of the dutyholder (facility manager, building manager, landlord, etc) so yeah someone who's just doing inspection and testing isn't directly responsible for that unless they happen to also be the dutyholder. But then also "A dutyholder may enlist the services of a competent person to assist in this process" which is where the job ends up passed down (if only as "advice") which honestly makes sense to me, I'm trained in what I'm looking for and what's more likely to make it fail (e.g. vibration loosening earth bonds) so of course I'm probably better placed to offer advice on whether something should be checked more often or if it can wait a bit longer. It just happens to be the dutyholder who bears the ultimate responsibility and I imagine if something went horribly wrong, they'd be asked "well did you listen to the advice of the competent person when they suggested you look at it every year? Why did you leave it for 5?" or whatever.

Of course, good luck to the IET getting the 20p-per-item types to shift from "10 seconds to plug in, push button, apply sticker - next" to more of an inspection and thought process, I bet most don't even check inside removable plugs, it's literally not possible to properly assess an item to the modern standards if you're one of the oldschool "2000 items a day" crowd. I'm fortunate enough to not be trying to earn a living directly from this, it's just one part of my job and for our own equipment so they'd rather I do my job properly. We used to use the "pay someone peanuts to come in and do it all" approach and I've seen my share of items with their green pass sticker on the plug top and the cardboard instruction sleeve still on the other side.

derykmarl said:

Of course, good luck to the IET getting the 20p-per-item types to shift from "10 seconds to plug in, push button, apply sticker - next" to more of an inspection and thought process, I bet most don't even check inside removable plugs, it's literally not possible to properly assess an item to the modern standards if you're one of the oldschool "2000 items a day" crowd. I'm fortunate enough to not be trying to earn a living directly from this, it's just one part of my job and for our own equipment so they'd rather I do my job properly. We used to use the "pay someone peanuts to come in and do it all" approach and I've seen my share of items with their green pass sticker on the plug top and the cardboard instruction sleeve still on the other side.

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on the rare occassions I do any PATing I charge my usual hourly rate. 20p an item is just not worth bothering with

I am very much of the opinion they shouldn't put those ruddy cardboard bits on plugs, it's amazing how many people don't remove them, and if you don't know how to wire a plug, it will make no difference to safety.

derykmarl said:

Also I forgot to add before anyone pulled me on it for not being portable, nowadays "projector bolted to ceiling" does need at least an inspection as it's no longer "portable appliance testing" but now "in-service inspection and testing of electrical equipment" and the contents of the CoP reflect that... but I suspect that everyone who's received training as recently as me has probably been taught to yes be diligent but also that they're allowed to be realistic e.g. say "let's not worry about that item quite as often, because it's not going anywhere and no one is even likely to touch it". That's the mindset I was taught anyway. You're encouraged to use your noggin more rather than "push button, come back next year", and I think they'd rather have that aspect of realism about whether something is reasonable, so that equipment is at least looked at every so often even if it's e.g. every five years rather than a mindset of "it's crazy to look at that once a year so I'm just never going to look at it".

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I think you have been taken in by some misinformation it has always been ISITEE it just got interpreted as PAT in the early days

derykmarl said:

What we did get taught is to think about whether "please just pile all your portable equipment into the middle of this room for testing" is really suitable, because when it's been piled into the middle of a room you don't really know its regular environment. So my thinking was kind of extrapolating from that.

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Any signs of deterioration of the appliance should give a good indication of what type of environment it is being operated or abused in, why does it matter what the regular environment is if the appliance is portable it is easily moved and could be used in any environment.
As an example would be the cleaners cupboard with vacuum cleaners, floor polishers etc it is very rare when you go onsite they are actually being used or even found in the rooms they are used in but on a few sites I used to work on the floor polishers had a 6 or 8 week check cycle as there were many attempts by the users to use them beyond the length of the fitted lead resulting in the plug being pulled from the socket or on some occassions the flex being pulled from the plug when the flex was stretched to it's limit. This is were experience kicks in in assessing a T & I cycle

derykmarl said:

When it comes to doing a risk assessment (from which you can decide on frequency) it's stated as the responsibility of the dutyholder (facility manager, building manager, landlord, etc) so yeah someone who's just doing inspection and testing isn't directly responsible for that unless they happen to also be the dutyholder. But then also "A dutyholder may enlist the services of a competent person to assist in this process" which is where the job ends up passed down (if only as "advice") which honestly makes sense to me, I'm trained in what I'm looking for and what's more likely to make it fail (e.g. vibration loosening earth bonds) so of course I'm probably better placed to offer advice on whether something should be checked more often or if it can wait a bit longer. It just happens to be the dutyholder who bears the ultimate responsibility and I imagine if something went horribly wrong, they'd be asked "well did you listen to the advice of the competent person when they suggested you look at it every year? Why did you leave it for 5?" or whatever.

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The person carrying out the test and inspection can recommend any T & I frequency they deem suitable but ultimately it is down the the duty holder or person passing the order for testing and inspection that takes responsibility for maintaining the recommended testing cycle

derykmarl said:

Of course, good luck to the IET getting the 20p-per-item types to shift from "10 seconds to plug in, push button, apply sticker - next" to more of an inspection and thought process, I bet most don't even check inside removable plugs, it's literally not possible to properly assess an item to the modern standards if you're one of the oldschool "2000 items a day" crowd. I'm fortunate enough to not be trying to earn a living directly from this, it's just one part of my job and for our own equipment so they'd rather I do my job properly. We used to use the "pay someone peanuts to come in and do it all" approach and I've seen my share of items with their green pass sticker on the plug top and the cardboard instruction sleeve still on the other side.

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I doubt we will ever be totally rid of the flyby test and inspection guys as most dutyholders have little or no knowledge of what they are buying so the cheapest quotation will generally always win the day