In article ,
"Christian McArdle" writes:
I expect that some "proper" testing should and does take place,
depending on the type of equipment. We can wait weeks for someone to
make up and PAT test a 13A trailing lead, or I can walk into any local
supermarket and buy one, but I am not supposed to use it at work until
the PAT guy has eyeballed it and affixed his sticker.

Technically, I thought you didn't need to PAT test new stuff in its first
year.

There are no hard and fast rules, just guidelines.
You can start off using the guidelines, but you should modify
those in the light of your experience, e.g. if you are picking
up failures, then you may need to increase testing frequency,
and conversely if you aren't ever finding problems, you could
use this to justify decreasing the testing frequency if you
have appropriate record keeping to show this.

The testing period for different things in different situations
varies enormously, from some things almost never needing testing,
through to other things requiring daily testing (e.g. a fairground
ride). So you can't claim a blanket no need to test new items for
a year.

--
Andrew Gabriel