PAT Testing Frequency: How Often Is It Actually Required? (UK Guide)

PAT Testing Frequency: How Often Is It Actually Required?

The most common PAT question — how often do we have to test? — has an answer most people don't expect: there is no fixed legal interval. "Annual PAT testing" is an industry convention, not a legal requirement. What the law actually requires is subtler, and for most offices it means you're probably testing some equipment more often than needed — and site equipment less often than you should.

Here's what the law says, the risk-based intervals that competent duty holders use, and a free log template to run it.

What the Law Actually Requires

The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require electrical equipment that could cause danger to be maintained to prevent that danger. That's it — no mention of PAT, no intervals, no stickers. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and PUWER 1998 add the general duties around safe, maintained work equipment.

PAT — inspection and combined testing of portable appliances — is simply the recognised way of demonstrating that maintenance duty for plug-in equipment. (Operating in Australia or New Zealand? The equivalent regime is test and tag under AS/NZS 3760.) The framework used by competent testers is the IET Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment, and its core principle is that frequency should be risk-based: environment, equipment class, and how the equipment gets treated determine the interval — not a blanket annual rule.

The Three Levels of Checking

1. User checks — the person using the kettle or drill glances at the lead, plug, and casing before use. No records needed; damage gets reported.
2. Formal visual inspection — a documented check of lead, plug, fuse, and casing by someone trained. Finds the large majority of defects.
3. Combined inspection and test — visual plus instrument tests (earth continuity, insulation resistance). The "PAT test" with the sticker.

Most over-testing comes from skipping straight to level 3 on everything, annually, when the Code of Practice expects the mix to vary by risk.

Typical Intervals by Environment

Starting points used by competent duty holders (adjust on your own risk assessment):

Two patterns worth noticing: office IT barely needs instrument testing — it sits still, in a clean environment, double-insulated in many cases. And site tools need attention monthly — the annual-sticker convention is dangerously slack there. Risk-based means both things at once.

What "Risk-Based" Looks Like in Practice

Four questions per appliance group:

• Environment — clean office or wet, dusty, knock-prone site?
• Class — Class I (earthed) needs the earth path tested; Class II (double-insulated) relies on its casing, so visual inspection does most of the work.
• Usage — how often is it moved, unplugged, dropped, or abused? Cable flexing is the main killer.
• History — what's actually been failing? Your own test results are the best interval evidence you'll ever have. If two years of workshop tests show zero failures, the interval can stretch; a cluster of failures means tighten it.

Document the reasoning once, apply it per group, review it when results suggest otherwise. That's a defensible regime — and it's usually cheaper than blanket annual testing.

Keeping the Records

No specific record format is legally required, but without records you can't demonstrate maintenance, set intervals from history, or answer an insurer or HSE inspector. The minimum that works: an appliance register (ID, class, location, environment, interval, next due) and a test log (date, result, readings, tester).

The register's job is the next due column. Appliances spread across buildings and vans, on different intervals, is exactly the shape of problem where spreadsheet dates quietly expire — the same failure mode as every compliance spreadsheet. If PAT is one of several statutory regimes you're juggling (fire equipment, LOLER, legionella), that's the point where a CMMS with compliance scheduling earns its keep: every appliance an asset, every interval a recurring schedule, every test a record with the certificate attached — and a reminder that fires before the due date, not after.