What Is PAT Testing?
EET Testing or Electrical Equipment Testing is actually its correct term but Portable Appliance Testing or PAT Testing are more commonly used.
Electricity is a major cause of accidental fires in UK homes and businesses – over 20,000 each year and nine out of 10 (89%) electrical fires are caused by electrical products.
EET Testing is the process of periodically testing your electrical appliances to ensure they are safe to use and should be an essential part of any company’s health and safety policy.
Is PAT Testing a Legal Requirement?
This is a question we get asked a lot. The legislation’s of specific relevance to electrical maintenance are the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. Also The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 puts the duty of care upon both the employer and the employee to ensure the safety of all persons using the work premises. This includes the self employed.
The regulations state that portable electrical equipment must be maintained in a safe condition and that certainly is a legal requirement. The only way to comply with that is to carry out PAT Testing and establish an appropriate schedule. So whilst PAT testing in itself isn’t legally required it’s a recognised way to ensure compliance with the various regulations.
The IEE Code of Practice for In Service Inspection and Testing of Equipment sets out the standard to which each appliance is comprehensively tested and we use the very latest PAT testing equipment made by Seaward, the leading providers of PAT Testing equipment and software to carry this out. Also most commercial insurers also require your electrical items to be PAT Tested and we always advise you check with them to see the frequency of testing that they require.
If you’ve only got a few items that require PAT Testing then it would be more cost effective contacting your local tool hire store, most offer an over the counter service which would be significantly cheaper than arranging for an engineer to come out to you.
What’s Included:
What We Do:
Our fully qualified engineers will visit your premises and first carry out a thorough visual inspection of your appliances then several electrical tests will be carried out on each appliance. These can include Earth Continuity, Insulation Resistance and Substitute Leakage depending on the appliance..
If the appliance passes these tests a unique asset number will be attached showing the month and year it was tested and the old label will be removed, we wont stick label upon label to your appliances. We will leave it looking as neat as possible.
Should the appliance fail it will be logged and labelled with a red “Do Not Use” label and the duty holder informed.
After all of the appliances have been tested the engineer will return to one of our offices to download the results into our software and a fully itemised detailed report showing individual test results for each appliance will be provided, the same day.
PAT Testing in Sheffield and beyond !
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