A standby generator fails its test: the healthcare response

A failed generator test is a live resilience gap, not a job for next week. Identify who and what depends on power if the mains fails, put interim cover and contingency in place with clinical input, and restore assured backup by repairing and successfully re-testing under load.

What has happened

During a routine test, a healthcare site's standby generator fails to start, fails to take load, or shuts down. Until it is fixed and re-tested, the site may have no assured backup power. HTM 06-01 (Electrical services supply and distribution) sets out resilient electrical supply and testing expectations for healthcare premises, and NHS emergency-preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR) treats loss of assured power as a critical business-continuity risk because so much safe care depends on it.

Immediate actions

Convene estates and clinical leads and the on-call manager. Establish why the test failed, whether any backup cover remains, and the expected repair time. Map the clinical dependencies: power-dependent patients and equipment, refrigerated medicines and vaccines, IT and records, lifts needed for evacuation, heating and water pumps. Put proportionate interim measures in place, such as a temporary generator, confirmed uninterruptible power supplies for critical loads, prioritisation or relocation of the most dependent patients, and a heightened plan should the mains also fail. Brief staff on what to do in a power cut while cover is degraded.

What not to do

Do not log the failure and wait for the next planned maintenance visit, and do not assume the mains "won't fail in the meantime". Do not treat it as purely technical without assessing clinical impact, and do not accept a repair as complete without a successful load test. Do not overlook dependencies such as medicine fridges or record systems that fail quietly.

Who is responsible

The provider's estates and facilities leadership and the authorising/responsible persons for electrical services own the technical response under HTM 06-01, while clinical leads and the business-continuity lead own the patient-safety and contingency decisions. In a small care home, the registered manager coordinates the contractor and the contingency plan. A competent electrical engineer diagnoses, repairs and re-tests.

Evidence and records

Record the failed test and its findings, the resilience-gap assessment, the interim measures and their rationale, communications, the repair, and the successful re-test under load with the responsible person's sign-off. Note any CQC notification decision where safe care was materially at risk, and update the maintenance and testing log.

Escalation

Escalate a prolonged or unmitigated gap to senior management, commissioners and emergency-planning contacts, and consider a CQC notification where safe care is materially affected. Coordinate with wider estates resilience such as the water supply interruption response and ventilation verification, since utilities failures often interact.

Prevention

Keep the generator on a proper maintenance and load-testing regime per HTM 06-01, log every test and its result, act on early warning signs (starting difficulty, fuel, battery, coolant), maintain fuel and a temporary-generator contact, and rehearse the power-failure plan. A tracked testing history turns a surprise failure into a caught trend.

Where Complys can help

Complys can hold the site's generator maintenance and test records, resilience and business-continuity documents, and the incident action log, keeping the failed-test-to-verified-repair trail together for CQC. It does not maintain or test electrical plant or make clinical decisions; competent engineers and clinical leads do. Ask the Complys team to show how test schedules and incident actions are tracked.