Home Elevators & Lifts near you

The dividing line is speed. Schedule 2 to the Lifts Regulations 2016 lists the excluded lifts, and the first entry is lifting appliances whose speed is not greater than 0.15 metres per second. Domestic homelifts are built to run below that figure, so the Lifts Regulations do not apply to them. What applies instead is the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008, which cover assemblies with a power source and linked moving parts, together with lifting accessories and the chains, ropes and webbing used for lifting.

The British Standard that sits under that arrangement is BS 5900:2012, Powered homelifts with partially enclosed carriers and no liftway enclosures — Specification, published on 30 April 2012 and still current. Its scope is precise: electrically powered homelifts in private dwellings, for people with impaired mobility standing or seated, with or without a wheelchair, travelling vertically between two predefined levels along a guided path at a speed no greater than 0.15 metres per second.

In practice that gives you three things to ask for before signing, and they cost nothing. Ask which standard the lift is declared against. Ask for the declaration of conformity and the conformity marking, not a brochure. And ask what the manufacturer's stated service interval is, because that interval, rather than any statutory schedule, is what your maintenance contract should be written around.

The lift may be a machine, but the aperture is construction. Forming an opening in a floor means cutting and trimming joists, and that is structural work wherever you live. In England and Wales it engages the Building Regulations, with the structural requirement and the fire requirements both in play, and your building control body — the council or an approved inspector — is the right first call. Many installers handle the notification; make sure you know which of you is doing it.

Scotland runs a different system. Building work there needs a building warrant from the local authority's verifier before it starts, and the application is judged against the Scottish building standards rather than against Approved Documents. Northern Ireland has its own building regulations administered by district councils. If you are outside England and Wales, ask your council directly rather than relying on an installer's description of the English position.

Two other permissions have nothing to do with building control and are missed more often. A flat or maisonette is almost always leasehold, and a lease commonly requires the freeholder's written consent before anything is cut, drilled or fixed. A listed building needs listed building consent for works affecting its character, inside as well as out, and that is dealt with in the major renovations guide on this site. Both are worth settling before a survey is booked.

The question homeowners ask most is whether a home lift needs a statutory six-monthly examination. The honest answer is that it depends who uses it. Regulation 3 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 applies to employers in respect of equipment provided for or used by their employees at work, to self-employed people using lifting equipment at work, and to anyone who controls lifting equipment or its use in connection with a trade or business. A lift used only by the household in a private home is not being used at work, so LOLER does not bite on the householder.

That changes where paid care comes into the house. If a care worker or an employed carer uses the lift as part of their job, their employer has duties over the equipment they control. Regulation 9(3) then sets the interval that gives the six-month figure its currency: lifting equipment for lifting persons, and lifting accessories, must be thoroughly examined at least every six months, other lifting equipment at least every twelve, unless an examination scheme says otherwise. HSE puts it plainly for work settings — where people are being lifted, whether or not the equipment was designed to lift them, six-monthly examination applies.

The everyday safety points are more mundane and more common. Keep the aperture and the parking area clear, because a through-floor lift descending onto a laundry basket is the classic call-out. Understand the manual lowering procedure before you need it, and check that whoever else is in the house does too. Expect door interlocks and a controlled stop, and ask what happens in a power cut: most lifts will lower on battery, but only if the battery has been maintained.

The lift itself is only part of the number. What moves a quotation is the floor construction and how much trimming the aperture needs, the ceiling height and whether there is anything in the void above, the travel distance and number of levels served, whether a wheelchair has to turn inside the carriage, the electrical work needed to reach the position, the making good of floors, ceilings and skirtings at both levels, and the service contract attached to it. A shaft lift standing on a solid ground floor is a different project from a through-floor lift in a house with a shallow first-floor void and a bathroom directly above the landing.

LokalMatch is the introduction, not the installer. Set out the house, the floor you need to reach and who will be using the lift once, with your postcode, and installers working in your area can respond. Using LokalMatch costs homeowners nothing; pros pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not carry out the work, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone who gets in touch, so checking conformity paperwork, building control arrangements and what the service contract covers remains your job.