The lift is broken — who is liable and what applies

It is the property owner who is responsible for the lift working, being inspected on time and being maintained — in a rented building the landlord, in a housing co-operative the association. The duty follows from the Swedish Planning and Building Act and from Boverket's regulations and general recommendations (2011:12) on lifts and certain other powered installations, abbreviated H. The supervisory authority is the municipal building committee, which collects the inspection reports.

A broken lift is no small matter in a building with elderly or mobility-impaired residents, and the rules are in fact stricter on deadlines than they are for ventilation.

How often the lift must be inspected

The inspection is carried out by an accredited inspection body — not by the property owner and not by the service contractor. The intervals are in H ch. 3 s. 18:

Installation	Interval
First recurring inspection, all lifts	2 years
Thereafter: ordinary passenger lifts	1 year
Thereafter: goods and small-goods lifts, refuse lifts, stairlifts	2 years
Thereafter: platform lifts serving only 1–2 dwellings	2 years
Escalators and moving walkways	First 2 years, then 1 year
Powered doors and similar installations	First 2 years, then 2 years

Two things are worth pulling out of the table.

An ordinary passenger lift in an apartment building must be inspected every year. That is a tighter interval than any other of the property owner's inspections — ventilation control runs at three or six years, the energy certificate at ten.

Powered doors count here. The garage door and the refuse room door fall under the same regime as the lift, with inspection every two years. It is the item most often missing entirely from a portfolio's inspection plan, because nobody thinks of a door as an installation requiring inspection.

The inspection must also begin no later than two months before the interval expires and be completed before it runs out, and may begin at the earliest six months before (s. 13). Booking it on the day the interval expires is not permitted.

The one-month rule — stricter than for ventilation

Here the lift rules diverge sharply from ventilation control, where no general deadline exists.

Defects of immediate significance to safety and health. If an installation shows such defects after a first or revision inspection, it may not be taken into use (ch. 2 s. 4).
Defects without immediate significance. Under ch. 3 s. 24 these must be remedied within one month and checked at the next inspection.

One month. That is an express deadline in the regulation, unlike a ventilation remark where the date is set by the inspector, by the committee or by you — see ventilation remarks.

There is also a trap in s. 23: the owner must produce the report from the most recent inspection at the next one. If it is not produced, all outstanding defects are deemed to constitute an immediate risk to safety and health. A lost report can therefore in itself make the lift be judged unsafe.

The logbook almost nobody keeps

Under H ch. 4 s. 2 the owner or the party otherwise responsible must ensure that a logbook is kept. Every time inspection, servicing or maintenance is carried out, it must record

the date,
the scope of the work, and
who carried it out.

The logbook must also show whether the installation has been modified, the scope of the modification, and whether it triggered a revision inspection. The inspection body checks the logbook at the recurring inspection.

In practice the logbook sits with the lift contractor rather than the owner, which works until the contractor changes. Ask for it at every change of contract — it is the document showing the lift was looked after between inspections.

Substantial modifications require a revision inspection

An installation modified in a way of substantial significance to safety must be revision-inspected before it is taken back into use (s. 25). The examples in the regulation's general recommendations include replacing the lift, changing door locks, control systems, machinery or the safety gear — and also a change in how the building is used that substantially affects the installation's safety.

That last point is the one most often missed: rebuilding premises so the lift sees an entirely new kind of traffic can trigger a revision inspection without anyone touching the lift.

The lift has been broken for two weeks and the landlord is doing nothing — what can I do?

In this order, keeping written evidence at every step:

Report the fault in writing and ask for a timetable. Verbal reports do not exist when the matter is tested later.
Contact the municipal environmental committee if the fault constitutes a detriment to human health — which it can, if someone in the building cannot get out or home without the lift. The committee can open supervision against the property owner under the Environmental Code.
Contact the building committee if you suspect the inspection has not been carried out. It is the supervisory authority for lifts and can require the report.
Apply to the rent tribunal for a remedial order. Under chapter 12 of the Land Code the tribunal can order the landlord to remedy a defect within a set time. You can simultaneously claim a rent reduction for the period the flat is in defective condition.

Point four is the one that actually bites, and the one fewest people know about. If you are a member of the Swedish Union of Tenants they will help with the application.

If you live in a housing co-operative

Then the association owns the lift and is responsible for inspection and maintenance — see housing co-operative board duties. The route runs via the board, not the rent tribunal, because you are a member rather than a tenant. If the problem persists, the building committee and the environmental committee are the same routes as for a tenant.

Defects other than the lift

If the problem is cold, poor air or damp instead, different rules and different reference values apply:

Indoor temperature — at least 18 °C operative temperature, 20 °C for sensitive groups.
Ventilation remarks — when the ventilation is not working.
Self-monitoring under the Environmental Code — what routines the owner must have between inspections.

If you own the portfolio

Lifts and doors are the inspection most often left outside the shared tracking, for two reasons: the interval is the shortest of them all and is handled in practice by the lift contractor, and the doors are rarely counted at all. That means portfolios with everything in order on ventilation and energy certificates can still have a garage door that has never been inspected.

Emphyx does not track lifts. We handle energy certificates, ventilation control and radon per building in regulatory compliance, and lifts are deliberately excluded — see the annual calendar, where all seven inspections are listed with their legal basis and supervisory authority. We do not receive fault reports either. If you need lift tracking, that is a lift register or your contractor's system.