PAT Testers

Come along and meet the PAT Testing experts. PASS are pleased to announce the first of the manufacturer open days at their Stockton on Tees trade counter. Continue reading →

If you are in the market for a basic PAT tester there are plenty to choose from. Basic PAT testers allow you to perform PAT on most appliances quickly and easily without the need for complicated menus or data entry. This means that testing can be quick and easy. Continue reading →

With everyone still feeling the pinch of the recession, winning those important PAT testing jobs is more important than ever. It can be very difficult to work out how much you should quote for each individual job and with prices per test said to be ranging from 60p to £3.00 per test how low can you afford to go? Continue reading →

The summer holidays are nearly upon us, the kids are soon to be free for six weeks to play in the lovely(!) British weather and – most importantly – the schools are ready for testing. Since the hustle and bustle of school kids, teachers, cleaners, dinner ladies and everyone else is pretty much gone during the summer, most schools, colleges and universities choose the six week period between terms to conduct their portable appliance testing. While generally it's possible to work around work environments when PAT testing, schools are much more complex because of the learning environment and the disruption testing would cause. Continue reading →

When performing portable appliance testing, you may think you’ve caught everything.  You’ve tested the computers, you’ve thoroughly checked over your kettle and you’ve delved into the quality of your laptop chargers. You probably think you’ve tested everything and are safe for the next year, but what most people don’t remember is that any new items coming into the organisation are also technically subject to a check over. While there isn’t any legal obligation to do so and – technically – anything that comes from a manufacturer should work fine straight out of the box, there’s always the risk that the new portable appliance will have some kind of error. Whether it’s a power lead with reversed polarity or something vitally important like loose wiring, these kinds of problems can and will be a problem with any possible piece of new equipment. Continue reading →

A complete guide to electrical safety and portable appliance testing (in service) safety for landlords, including responsibility, regulations, cost and advice. Keeping up with all of the rules and regulations is a potential minefield for any landlord; when this problem involves potentially dangerous electricity, this issue can become even more difficult. We will try and keep this document updated when changes are made to regulations. As guidance on this matter is vague at best we thought we’d try and clear thing up for Landlords asking the questions. Continue reading →

Please note this blog was originally published in July 2012. It was updated on the 5th May 2021 to include new, up-to-date PAT testers.  Portable appliance testing (PAT) is well known to most people who own a business. It is the process whereby all the portable electric appliances a business owns are tested to ensure they meet high standards of safety. Continue reading →

As a landlord you may feel inundated by rules and regulations. When the Health and Safety Executive release guidance on electrical testing do you find yourself worrying about where the guidance stops and the legal obligation begins?  To be fair, their recent guidance on the maintenance of “portable electric equipment in low-risk environments” is clearly summarised on the HSE site, specifically in a six-page PDF document entitled “Maintaining portable electric equipment in low-risk environments”. It’s free to download and well explained, however does this information, for example, take into account the small print on your commercial insurance policy? Continue reading →