Business Assessment Service

Assessment and certification within the UK is deemed by the UK government to be a voluntary activity. Whilst the government encourages all business to strive for ever better quality and management systems it does not impose a requirement for registration such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 etc. However Business Assessment Service use the International Register of Quality Assessed Organisations - IRQAO, to list all client achievements.

Individual purchasing managers may feel that such registration is desirable and sometimes even those within the public service may have a local policy for registration. Nonetheless, such specification is a local preference and not a government requirement.

The UK government has appointed a national accreditation body. This is known as UKAS and is the only one that the government is allowed to appoint. (European Regulation 765/08 addresses this point). This does not mean that there are no other accreditation bodies permitted to operate. In fact there are very many accreditation bodies operating within the UK and some of them have a very narrow remit of operation.

It may help to understand a few terms:-

Assessment is an activity where evidence is compiled sufficient to allow a certification body to make a decision on the merit and worthiness of an organisation to receive a certificate of registration. Typically assessments are conducted regarding standards such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 etc. these are management systems standards.

Certification is an activity where several process such as audit and assessment are put together so that a certification body may issue a certificate. The certification body should have no relationship with the organisation receiving the certificate which is why they are often called ‘third party certification bodies’. Typically certification is conducted in accordance with a standard for certification bodies. Currently the most common standard is ISO 17021.

Accreditation is the activity of attesting the activities of a certification body. This is done by an accreditation body and the accreditation body usually has to comply with its own standard and this is typically ISO 17011. ‘Accreditation’ is often a word misused when an ordinary firm is registered regarding ISO 9001 and press releases often talk of them achieving accreditation. In a strict sense it is not true but for the lay person such terminology serves to ‘get the message over’.

The UK government position is that certification is a voluntary activity. As such there is no legal requirement for certification nor for certification bodies to be accredited. Nonetheless, in some special cases (such as medical devices and other items covered by a small group of EU product directives.) special care is needed. Therefore, the relevant government agency typically has said that certificates can only be issued by a special class of organisation. These are called Notified Bodies and most operate as certification bodies as well. This often is related to products and the subject of CE Marking.

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