Working with a local Portable Appliance Tester

Just because you don’t have your own in-house Health and Safety specialist, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have access to the best health and safety services.

The HSE is awash with useful information but where do you start? It’s hard, you need to concentrate on what most affects your business, but not doing something because you didn’t look into it, doesn’t wash when something goes wrong.

I read Health and Safety for dummies when I was starting out – god that was boring! But it taught me some useful information. I can show you what you need to know, in regards to PAT testing.

By working with me, a Portable Appliance Tester, you can learn about the importance of maintaining safe electrical equipment; or you can just hand it over and we’ll get on with it.

You are required by law in the UK to maintain safe electrical equipment – regular inspections and tests help you do this, and provide you with documentary evidence to prove you are taking action; this is called PAT Testing.

We have been providing PAT testing services to businesses just like yours since 2009; helping shops, cafe’s, offices, landlords, schools, B&B’s, DJ‘s, singers, tradespeople, people who work from home and so on to manage their electrical safety through Portable Appliance Testing (PAT), and mains wiring inspections (EICR).

Many small businesses don’t even know they need to maintain safe electrical equipment, many never know about it until it’s too late. Big companies know because they employ safety personnel, but the rest of us don’t have such easy access to all this information, which is where we can help you.

As specialists in electrical safety, especially where electrical equipment is concerned, we can guide you in the best practices to maintain a safe workplace for your staff, customers, guests, etc.

We are based in Newcastle upon Tyne and cover the North East region. Most of our work is in Tyne and Wear and southern Northumberland, but wherever you are we can help. Even if you’re outside the area and just need a bit of advise, get in touch.

We offer great value PAT Testing, including free minor repairs, and will get the PAT Testing Certificate Report to you within a few days; even the same day if necessary.

I always tell my clients this; the most important thing you need to know where electrical safety is concerned – getting someone in to do it doesn’t relinquish responsibility from you. You are responsible for safety in your workplace now, and after we have been.

Think about that when you’re considering the cheapest bidder. If a company quotes you (for example) half what we do, ask yourself, can they do as good a job? How can they do it so much cheaper? Is the other guy just expensive (us)? What do I get for my money?

If peace of mind, and safe electrical equipment is what you’re after then think less about the cost and more about the service. We don’t charge a lot; we offer great value PAT testing – we charge a normal price, to make a wage, doing a job the way it should be done; and when we are done our clients have peace of mind.

Another benefit for working with us is our professionalism; our team all wear branded uniforms, are friendly and polite.

We take pride in our work and each member of our team is carefully selected for a job they are most suitable for, and trained into the mould of the owner, Richard, so they are friendly and polite. There’s nothing worse than a rude, rushed, intrusive PAT tester who’s rummaging through drawers looking for another phone charger, or slapping stickers on your pile of broken printers, just to get a few extra items.

These guys are only interested in numbers; it’s not their fault really, it’s the situation they’re put in; but there is a reason why you tend not to get them back.

You need to work with your PAT tester, so you get the best value PAT testing for your money.

Some of these so called bigger companies target their guys 500 items a day – we’re fast, but that’s impossible. They’d have to run around your office slapping stickers on everything in site and testing nothing to get that number. We don’t work like that. Whilst we have targets, they’re sensible business targets, and reflect in the price we operate at. We estimate a more sensible number is 150 to 250 per day depending on where we are; and that’s what you should expect too.

If we were to do more than that we would have to cut corners, skip visual inspections or make up test results! You do not want that.

You need the peace of mind that your equipment has had a proper inspection, a proper test, and is safe.

Many people don’t know that they need PAT testing doing, never mind what it actually is; do you really care?

You just need to do it!

PAT is a process that is carried out on electrical equipment to make sure it is safe. It’s part of the umbrella of “Electrical Inspection and Testing” which covers appliances and the mains wiring.

Electrical equipment that is used in workplaces, eg computers, kettles, drills, hoovers, etc have to maintain an acceptable level of safety, and to check that is the case they need regular inspections and testing; it’s called PAT testing. PAT testing is actually the shortened version of the original term Portable Appliance Testing; and the person that does the job (and the machine he uses) is referred to as a Portable Appliance Tester or PAT tester.

Portable Appliance Testing is a process to check electrical equipment is safe, it involves:

A visual inspection of the appliance and environment it is used in – to make sure use and environment is appropriate, and to make sure the plug, inside it, the fuse, the cable etc is providing the levels of safety necessary to prevent harm to users.

Some appliances, such as those with conductive exposed metal parts also need testing using a Portable Appliance Tester to make sure the user will be safe under ‘fault conditions’.

Some appliances are fully covered in plastic, referred to as double insulation. For these a visual inspection is sufficient, but other appliances where metal parts can be accessed by the human finger (touched) need more thorough tests.

People need protecting from these parts, if the appliance becomes faulty, and it is our job to make sure that all the safety measures are functioning correctly to protect the user.

Inspection in testing is done to check..

• If something that is dangerous is touchable, and 
• If there is a fault on the equipment; is it still safe? For example; some appliances have an earth wire in the cable to provide protection to the user, so we need to make sure that ‘earth’ is functioning correctly – this is done by opening the plug, checking connections are correct and running a test – if the PAT tester skips this step he could miss a major fault, that could become life threatening.
• If the accessible part could become live under fault conditions

We operate inline with the British Standard EN 50699, which requires us to inspect and test electrical equipment to make sure it provides the safety measures required of it, so the protection for the user is in place.

If there is an accident in your workplace, after we have done the PAT testing, you can be confident that you have done everything necessary in accordance with the requirements of British Standards.

You can state that we have met the requirements of PUWER 1998 by following the guidance of BS EN 50699 and tested everything in accordance with that standard.

What else can you/we have done to make sure equipment is safe? You have followed a British Standard.