A common question, and a genuinely reasonable one: does a noise assessment have a fixed expiry date? The honest answer is no — the Regulations don’t set a fixed number of years. What they do require is that your assessment stays valid, and that you review it when there’s reason to think it no longer reflects reality.
What actually triggers a review
- New or replaced machinery — different equipment almost always means a different noise profile, even doing the same job.
- A layout change — moving a machine, adding a wall or screen, or changing what’s next to what, changes exposure even if nothing else does.
- A change in shift patterns or working methods — the same machine run for longer, or by more people, changes who is exposed and for how long.
- Health surveillance results showing an unexpected trend in a particular role or area.
- Simply enough time passing that you can no longer be confident the assessment still reflects a normal working day — good practice, even without a specific trigger, is a periodic check-in rather than treating one survey as permanent.
Why “it was fine three years ago” isn’t the same as compliant now
An assessment is a snapshot of a working day, at a point in time. Every change above quietly moves you away from that snapshot without anyone deciding to. A report from years ago, in a filing cabinet, doesn’t know that a machine was swapped out last spring, or that a wall came down to open up the floor.
The practical answer
If in doubt: has anything changed since the last assessment that could plausibly change who’s exposed, to what, or for how long? If yes, that's your trigger. If it's simply been a long time and you can't confidently answer that question either way, that itself is a reason to check.
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