UKAS Accreditation
WHO IS UKAS?
UKAS is the sole accreditation body for the United Kingdom, providing assurance that a Certification Body is technically competent, objective and impartial. The UK Department for Business specifically states on GOV.UK:
”The only ‘authoritative statement’ of competence, that has public authority status – providing the last level of control in the conformity assessment chain is from the UK’s national accreditation body, UKAS”
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO CHOOSE A UKAS ACCREDITED CERTIFICATION BODY?
The ONLY way to be 100% certain your ISO certificate will be recognised by every organisation who requests a copy of it, including when bidding for contracts in the private and public sectors, is for it to have been issued by a UKAS accredited Certification Body such as the British Assessment Bureau.
WHAT HAPPENS TO ORGANISATIONS WHO CHOOSE NON-UKAS?
Those who choose non-UKAS are not committing any offence unless they mislead people into believing they have ‘UKAS accredited’ certification. However, from the organisations who have contacted us to discuss transferring their non-UKAS certification, we have learnt of two severe consequences suffered by those that did choose it:
- Loss, or threat of losing an important contract.
- Reputational damage.
For example, one organisation had proudly announced their non-UKAS accredited certification on social media, but unfortunately received such a large amount of negative feedback from other companies (who understood the strength and value of UKAS accreditation), they choose to remove due to the detrimental effect on their reputation.