Pat Testing (also known as Portable Appliance Testing) is a way of checking your electrical equipment to see if it is SAFE.

PAT Testing is an important part of your organisation’s Health and Safety regime. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small business or a large multi-site corporation; if you use electrical equipment in your business, then you have a responsibility to make sure it is safe.

Additionally many insurance companies insist that PAT Testing be carried out every 12 months (or less) in order to satisfy the conditions of their policy, and local council inspectors (Fire Officers, Health and Safety Officers) routinely ask for evidence of PAT Testing when they carry out their inspections.

We employ competent skilled and experienced engineers to test your equipment. We can test efficiently, quickly and with the minimum of disruption to your business.

To comply with UK workplace regulations for electrical safety you must maintain safe electrical equipment at all times; how you do this is up to you but the only recognised process is called inspection and testing of electrical equipment, otherwise known as portable appliance, or PAT testing. 

This means that you need to get your electrical appliances PAT tested as often as is necessary to ensure your equipment maintains the safety standards. This is because the process of PAT testing confirms an appliance is safe or not; and includes remedial repairs by the test engineer to the plug to ensure the appliance is safe. In addition the results of all the tests have to be recorded, from which you will be provided with a document to confirm the status of each appliance, the test results and guidance on how to improve or continue to manage the safety standards. 

How often you need to get equipment tested is a big area for discussion and there is more information on our PAT testing frequency page, but all you need to do is book us to do your inspections, during which we will assess the risks and recommend retest periods for the equipment you have. This could mean all appliances are tested on a particular retest period, or different types of appliances are tested at different times. For example in an office your stationery desk top computers won’t need testing as often as your laptops that are taken home. 

We recommend at this point you contact us to discuss your situation, or to get a quote for us to do your testing. The rest of the information on this page is going into more detail; it is information which may or may not be of interest to you but it is not essential for booking an appointment. 

Electrical equipment that is purchased from a reputable supplier should be of a satisfactory safety standard, but it must be maintained to stay that way, so that it does not deteriorate so far that it puts users at risk. 

It is recognised that PAT Testing is the easiest and best way to check electrical equipment is safe, and the process that is followed to achieve this includes carrying out repairs to ensure the appliance is safe. 

Using a local PAT testing company to do this is a benefit to you as it means if you need urgent help anytime you can call on your engineer to come out, who knows you and your business and will be the best possible help. 

Can I PAT test my own equipment? You can… but why would you want to? 

I can do my own accounts; but why would I want to? When an accountant or a book-keeper can do them much quicker, much better, more efficiently and probably cheaper than I can. 

An electrical appliance must be maintained to a safe standard to comply with the Electricity at Work Regulations; it must be visually checked to make sure there is no visual damage to the plug; is it wired correctly? A visual inspection will find faults in the plug, the fuse, the wiring, the flexible cable, the appliance protection. A person needs to be competent in electrical appliance safety to do all that – are you a competent person?

A PAT testing engineer is trained to do visual inspections; he does them all day every day so is the most competent person to do it. Like your accountant, he can do it better and quicker than you can.

We come across new clients regularly who have tried to do PAT testing in-house, but they have got behind because it takes them so long. In the time it takes them to do a couple of appliances, we could do ten or more. They’re often shocked that we can do in a day what takes them a week. That’s because we are the best at what we do – we are PAT testing experts; just like you are an expert at what you do – you don’t need to do everything.  

No you don’t; it helps but not essential. People who do PAT testing have to be a ‘competent person’; this doesn’t stipulate whether they need to be qualified or have just done a training course. As experienced Portable Appliance testers we say that you need to be competent first. In fact we have an operator, who has been with us a long time, who has done an electrical apprenticeship, but is not qualified in PAT, but is very good at his job. In fact we’d go so far as to say he is better than a lot of other qualified PAT testers we have come across.

How much will PAT testing cost you to do it in-house depends on the value of the person doing it to your business. Let’s use the school caretaker as the example. Some schools put their caretaker through a course, buy him the gear then tell him to do the PAT Testing. He hasn’t got time to do it all in a week or two over the holidays like a PAT testing company can, because he has other jobs to do, so he spreads it out over the year. 

But throughout the year he has other jobs to do too, and before you know it the year has gone by, he’s not managed to do more than a hundred items and he’s forgotten everything he learnt on the course. And now the machine needs its annual calibration. 

• The cost of a PAT testing course £300.00
• The cost of a basic PAT tester £400.00
• The cost of the kit £150.00
• The cost of software £400.00
• The cost of annual calibration £100.00
• Your employees time – priceless

That’s about a thousand pounds set up costs plus your time, and annual calibration and refresher training because staff will forget. Or just book us to do it. 

Who can carry out PAT testing? Any competent person can carry out PAT testing – all it takes is some knowledge, and basic training to get started. 

You can PAT test without a qualification. Guidance say you have to be competent to test electrical equipment, not that you have to be qualified. How you get competent is a matter for discussion. The Portable Appliance Testing Trade Association say that you should undergo thorough training by a competent person in order to become competent yourself. The current qualifications are flawed because the course is intended to get delegates through an exam, with the course focus more on pass rates than gaining knowledge. Although if you want to work for another company, you will need to get qualified (City and Guilds 2377) to get a job. 

You could sign up to do a practical skills course; you may find this more beneficial, as you will learn how to test appliances, how to use different machines and gain knowledge in why electrical appliance safety measures are important. The PAT Testing expert run a good training course in practical skills, at different venues around the UK. 

To conclude, Can you PAT test yourself? Yes you can, but we don’t know why you would want to. It’s easier, cheaper and far less hassle to use a PAT testing company. 

• Lower costs if you contract it out
• Less hassle if you contract it out
• Less repeating yourself if you contract it out
• Loss of man-power doing it yourself 

Don’t try to PAT Test in-house; contact us about doing it for you. 

Our work can not be done from home, so we are continuing to operate during the Covid-19 Pandemic, albeit on a reduced level. As long as safety measures can be implemented we can still do work for you. 

Note: This is an old post written at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, and no longer applies. It would make sense to take the post down but Google will penalise us for doing so so we have to leave it here. 

If you can take into account the safety measures being implemented we can still carry out PAT testing for you. 

Our work perhaps is not essential, but it has to be done at some point, and many argue that the best time to do a PAT test is when the office is empty – we always feel that to be the case normally but not everyone can get us in at weekends, and there are not enough weekends for everyone, so now may be a great time. 

If your office is currently empty (or any other business premises), now is the best time to get equipment tested. Even if it isn’t all there, what is there can be tested now, and the rest be done when it returns to work. 

All we need is someone to open up, then leave us to get on with our work. 

We are well, and have no symptoms – if that changes we will notify you in advance. 

We are clean; most people that work like we do, in different places all the time, are generally clean anyway – we carried hand sanitiser long before we’d even heard of Covid-19. 

We also keep our equipment clean; cleaning it after every job to make sure no germs are lingering. 

When we get to your workplace to start, we’ll wash our hands before we touch anything. We carry baby wipes if we need to wipe surfaces before or after, and we regularly wash our hands. We use gloves where possible but as labels need applying this isn’t always possible, though we do our best. 

We will expect to maintain a safe distance from any persons from your workplace, and from each other if there is more than one of us on the job, and where possible we will open your windows to ensure good ventilation in the areas where we are working. We’ll shut them too of course. 

Check out our post on how we can visit your staff in their homes to PAT test their equipment, safely. 

Currently my staff are furloughed so they are not working; it is I doing all the jobs that come in, but this can be changed, so if you need a particularly large site doing we can do so. 

Please note we are not doing work in domestic properties were tenants are currently living, as our own safety measure. 

Update: Most of this no longer applies – we have been fully operational since June 2020.