Nearly every PAT visit turns up something. On a Chesterfield office floor it might be two extension leads and a kettle, and in a care home laundry it might be a single dryer with a scorched plug top. The fail itself is normal, and it is what happens in the days afterwards that decides whether you are compliant or just holding a report with red lines in it.
What happens on the day of the visit
When an item fails, the first job is to get it out of use. We unplug it, label it clearly as failed, and either hand it to whoever manages the site or move it to a spot where nobody will grab it by mistake. Labelling failed equipment is not itself a legal requirement in the UK, though it is standard practice under the IET Code of Practice for In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment, and HSG107 expects a defect system that gets faulty equipment out of service rather than leaving it plugged in with a note on it.
Some fails are fixed on the spot. A wrong fuse gets swapped for the correct BS 1362 rating, and a loose cord grip in a rewireable plug gets sorted, then the item is retested and recorded as a pass. Others are not so simple. A Class I appliance that will not meet the earth continuity limit of 0.1 ohms plus the resistance of its own lead, or a Class II item reading under 2 megohms on insulation resistance, is telling you something about its internal condition rather than its plug. The 5th edition also allows a competent tester to use judgement on borderline readings that sit inside the tolerance of the instrument, so a marginal result on an old but sound appliance is not automatically binned.
Repair, and who is allowed to do it
Plug tops, fuses, flexes and cord grips are routine repairs, and plenty of maintenance staff handle them in-house. Anything past that means opening the appliance up, and Regulation 16 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 requires the person doing it to have the technical knowledge or experience to avoid danger. In practice that means an electrician, a manufacturer-approved repairer, or a service engineer for the equipment type.
One step gets skipped more than any other. A repaired appliance needs a full inspection and test before it goes back into use, and until a pass is recorded against it the original fail still stands in your register. If you have had six items repaired and none of them retested, your paperwork says you have six failed appliances back in circulation.
When replacing is the cheaper answer
For low-value equipment, repair rarely stacks up. A £14 kettle with a failed element, a cheap extension lead with damaged insulation, or a desk fan with a cracked casing costs more in labour and a return retest than a new one does. A rule of thumb some organisations use is that if the repair quote gets close to half the replacement price, replace it. That logic changes for a commercial dishwasher, a hoist, or a piece of catering equipment where a service call is normal maintenance anyway.
Replacement has one advantage worth noting. New equipment placed on the UK market has to meet the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016, so you are starting from a known baseline rather than nursing an unknown history. Under Regulation 5 of PUWER 1998 you also have a standing duty to keep work equipment in efficient working order and good repair, and a written record showing an item was replaced closes that off neatly.
Retiring an appliance properly
Retiring means the item leaves the building. Cutting the plug off is the usual way to make sure a quarantined appliance does not quietly reappear in a cupboard, and after that it becomes waste electrical equipment. Businesses cannot put it in general waste. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013 govern its treatment, and your duty of care under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 means using an authorised carrier and keeping the transfer note. If you are buying a like-for-like replacement, the retailer has to offer free take-back of the old unit, which is often the simplest route for a single fridge or microwave.
The record is what gets asked for
Whoever asks to see your electrical safety evidence, whether that is a CQC inspector, an insurer after a claim, or a council licensing officer, tends to look at the fails rather than the passes. For each failed item they want the asset ID, the date, the fault, what you did about it, and the retest result or the disposal record. Under section 67 of the Housing Act 2004, an HMO licence can require the licence holder to produce a declaration on the safety of electrical appliances supplied, and an open fail with no follow-up is a poor answer to that request.
Our reports list every fail with the reason and the test values behind it, so you can make the repair or replace call without guessing. If you would like the fails from your last visit reviewed, or a fresh round of PAT testing booked in across Derbyshire and Chesterfield, get in touch. We also cover rented property and care homes, where quarantining a failed item matters more because someone else is living with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if an appliance fails its PAT test?
The tester takes it out of use, labels it as failed, and records the fault and test values on the report. Small faults such as a wrong fuse or a damaged plug are often repaired and retested on the same visit. Anything more serious stays out of service until it is either repaired by a competent person and retested, or replaced and disposed of properly.
Can an appliance that failed a PAT test be repaired and used again?
Yes, provided the repair is done by someone with the knowledge and experience to do it safely, which Regulation 16 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 requires. The appliance then needs a full inspection and test before anyone uses it again. Until a pass is recorded against that asset, your records still show it as failed.
Do I legally have to throw away an appliance that fails a PAT test?
No. A fail means the item must not stay in service in its current condition, and repairing it is a perfectly valid route as long as it is retested afterwards. If you do scrap it, businesses cannot put it in general waste. It is waste electrical equipment under the WEEE Regulations 2013, so use an authorised waste carrier and keep the transfer note, or take advantage of the free retailer take-back you get when buying a like-for-like replacement.
My tenant's own appliance failed. Am I responsible for it?
Your duty as a landlord covers the appliances you supply with the property, not items the tenant brought in themselves. We will not dispose of a tenant's property, so we label the item as failed and note it separately on your report. The sensible next step is telling the tenant in writing that the item failed and should not be used, and keeping a copy of that message with your records.
Does one failed appliance invalidate the whole PAT report?
No. A PAT report is a list of individual assets with a result against each one, so fails sit alongside passes rather than voiding the visit. What causes problems in an audit is a fail with no recorded outcome next to it. Once each failed item shows either a retest pass or a disposal record, the report stands up fine.