Farmboy:
PAT testing is a bit misleading actually. As evidenced by the current vs 4 code of practice, it's now called in service inspection and testing, which recognises that more than just portable appliances now need testing / inspecting, such as various fixed appliances also.
That said, however, you may find that the course is tailored for anyone, ordinary people and electricians alike, so will cover training for just portable appliances, without covering fixed appliances which will require safe isolation procedure to be undertaken, which ordinary people won't do, so they'll only be able to test plug in appliances; which means you could only be doing part of the testing job on a site.
In 2011, the HSE reviewed its approach to portable appliance maintenance in its own offices. Thinking about the type of equipment in use, and how it was used, the HSE looked back at the results from its annual testing of portable appliances across its estate over the last five years. Using the results of the previous tests, the HSE decided that further portable appliance tests are not needed within the foreseeable future or at all for certain types of portable equipment. Also, they decided to continue to monitor any faults reported as a result of user checks and visual inspections and review its maintenance system if evidence suggests that it needs revising. Electrical equipment will continue to be maintained by a series of user checks and visual inspections by staff that have had some training.
I suspect that in the intervening 8 years of this fascinating experiment, nothing bad enough has happened to require them to change back to doing formal annual inspections, as that notice has been on their website for a while.
I presume the folk selling PAT courses don't often refer to the HSE as an example of good practice however ..
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