Portable appliance testing commonly referred to as PAT testing is a systematic approach to ensuring your portable appliances are safe for continued use. A competent and trained person needs to make the decision of whether the item is safe and uses a variety of assessment methods.

We have recently seen self-study PAT testing courses online and our opinion is that although self-study online learning is great for certain subjects we feel PAT testing is not one of them.

We do offer tutor-led live online PAT testing courses that take a full day and has practical elements included – this is a great compromise between self-study and full face to face training. 

A very common error is people call PAT testing PAC testing. PAT testing is Portable Appliance Testing.

We will run our PAT testing course anywhere, we regularly go to clients sites in England, Scotland and Wales. We also have run courses in Europe for some of our customers.

PAT testing is the process of ensuring the appliance is safe, the process that we need to follow to make the decisions that an appliance is safe could be done by most people.

To do PAT testing you need to complete some training and be assessed as competent.  Most people after such training could become a PAT tester.

A PAT tester is the test and measurement instrument needed to complete the full PAT test. It measures levels of resistance and it needs to be checked at suitable intervals.

Most manufacturers and the IET Code of Practice state that this should be annual. We can arrange for your PAT tester to be calibrated if you require.