Understanding Accreditation
What Is Accreditation?
Accreditation is an independent assessment of a conformity assessment body’s competence and impartiality for defined activities. Its scope is specific: an accreditation held for one activity does not automatically cover every service offered by the same body.
The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the UK’s national accreditation body. Accreditation bodies in other countries may perform comparable roles within their respective systems.
How Does It Relate to Certification?
A certification body assesses a person, organisation, product, service or management system against specified requirements and may issue a certificate stating the result. An accreditation body assesses the competence of a certification body for the activities included in its accreditation scope.
A certificate’s subject, applicable requirements, issuing body and any claimed accreditation should therefore be checked separately. Accreditation of an issuing body must not be assumed from its name, location or the appearance of a certificate.
How Can a Claim Be Checked?
Where a certificate claims accreditation, check the named accreditation body, the issuing body and the relevant accreditation scope in the accreditation body’s official directory. For UKAS-accredited management system certificates, UKAS CertCheck may also be used to check the certificate record.
A document issued under a company’s own assessment scheme can be checked through that company’s verification service for its recorded details and current status. Verification of the document in the issuer’s system is different from verification of an independent accreditation claim.