DRA PAT Testing have been providing electrical equipment inspection and testing services across the North East of England since our formation in 2009. We are currently leading the way in our region, showcasing how we help our clients maintain safe equipment in their workplace.

We work predominantly in Tyne and Wear, our work sees us visiting office-based companies, schools, local shops and services, medical centres, etc from our North Shields’ office. We cover Newcastle Upon Tyne, Washington, Sunderland and Durham City. See the map for all the areas we cover.

If you only have a few items and are local, you can bring the equipment to our office (by appointment), but for all other work we come to you to inspect your electrical equipment, in-situ.

• All our engineers are uniformed, qualified and have enhanced DBS.
• We pride ourselves on being professional, reliable and always on time – we will give you a designated appointment time when we book the job

We carry our repairs automatically and for free, including replacing plugs and fuses, and following completion of our inspections we provide you with a fully comprehensive PAT Testing Certificate Report, and set you up on a managed retest programme to ensure you always remain compliant with the latest safety legislation and guidance.

We don’t mess about – our standards are high all the time, and there’s no fuss, we keep things simple:

• PAT Testing Certificate Reports are issued quickly after the job (sometimes same day), as a PDF by email
• Reports include the electrical test readings that you need to comply with investigations (most companies don’t provide this)
• Remedial repairs are carried out automatically, and free, such as rewires, plug parts, replacement fuses and BS1363 ’13a’ plugs
• We provide guidance on retest periods, and book you in for next inspections with reminders sent nearer the time
• Thermal image checks on servers and other items that can’t be turned off
• Over 15 years experience of testing for over 1500 clients, and over 1.5 Million appliances.

All our engineers are qualified and competent; we are accredited by CHAS, members of PATTA, hold enhanced DBS and are security vetted by Durham Police.

PAT testing a process for inspecting and testing electrical equipment used at work; essentially this means we look at every single electrical appliance that works of mains electricity, to make sure it safe to continue using. We do this by checking it doesn’t have any damage or defects, that it is fit for use and the readings obtained by testing are within a safe range. What this basically means, is, are the protection measures built into the appliance working, so that if an accident does occur, the user is protected. This helps you to comply with the Electricity At Work Regulations 1989.

How often a PAT test should be carried out is dependent on many factors, and can be different for different workplaces, different use of equipment etc. It should be done as often as necessary to eliminate or reduce as much as possible, the risk of an accident occurring. For most workplaces the best practice default is annual, but some will need more frequent inspections, and some equipment less. For example, a clean and tidy office, with monitors fixed to desks, tidy trunking systems, lots of sockets etc may not need annual testing, but a less tidy office, with lots of extension leads, laptops, and wires everywhere would need checking more often. A building site’s office may need doing just once a year, but the power tools will need checking every 1 to 3 months.

There are many possibilities, but these days most people get PAT done because their insurance requires it, and the insurer would prefer you to do it as often as is possible, e.g. annually,

Through a team of highly experienced, well trained and qualified engineers we’re able to offer PAT testing services across a range of sectors and working environments. We have the skills to manage almost every possible scenario to ensure your equipment is safer when we leave it than we found it. Whereas most PAT testers are limited to just one method, or one test machine, we have a range of systems so we can adjust to the environment we’re in. For example, whether we’re in an office or school with lots of IT, or a workshop or building site with lots of power tools and 110v.

We can carry out thermal surveys on server systems so they don’t need turning off, which saves you a lot of hassle and disruption whilst we can also offer out of hours testing of the main unit. We’re competent to isolate mains power to test fixed appliances, and do basic repairs, we can emissions test Microwave Ovens as well as correctly test RCDs, cable extensions etc.

On top of that we carry out minor repairs to standard ’13a’ plugs completely free of charge, including full plug replacements.

Our clients appreciate that we can help them maintaining safe electrical systems across their business, not just with appliances, so we collaborate with some of the regions best electrical engineers and electricians, who work for us as bonafide contractors, to provide you with a full range of electrical testing services including Fixed Appliance Testing, EICR, Emergency Lighting Inspections and EV Charger inspections.