Important guidance toward informed decision-making

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service is the sole national accreditation body recognised by government to assess, against internationally agreed standards, organisations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services.

UKAS is a non-profit-distributing private company, limited by guarantee.

There is one symbol that is common to all activities accredited by UKAS - the Royal Crown. This signifies Government recognition. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has licensed UKAS to use accreditation symbols featuring the Royal Crown (see back cover) and to sub-license the use of these marks to UKAS accredited organisations.

The UKAS 'Tick and Crown' is an assurance that an organisation is auditing consistently to the interpretation and in the application of the Management Systems Standard. Only UKAS-approved Certification Bodies have the authority to provide Registration Certificates (for examplpe, to ISO 9001) which feature the Tick and Crown, which is the common 'yardstick' of compliance in the UK and internationally.

Although it's legally possible for non-UKAS accredited companies to provide their clients with certificates that testify of their compliance to a certain Standard (e.g. ISO 9001), we at SQMC will never offer such as service - for the following reasons:
 We hold the belief that there is no genuine value in an ISO 9001 certificate which is printed, signed and awarded by the same company which put your Systems in place and wrote your Quality Manual - due to an obvious conflict of interests.
We employ 3rd party Auditors who work for many well known UKAS-approved Certification Bodies; and they all have cited personal experiences of large business deals breaking down when one party assesses the other's certification papers - only to discover that their ISO 9001 certificate is not recognised by UKAS. In essense, from their point of view, it is 'not worth the paper it's written on' - as it was rejected as an unreliable guarantee of compliance, ultimately failing to secure the partnership between supplier and client. SQMC would hate for this to happen to one of our clients!
Therefore, we urge you to ask questions before contracting any company which offers 'guaranteed ISO 9001 certification in X amount of days'.  We recommend that you ask if they are UKAS-accredited, and request written evidence of this. While they may offer excellent service as consultants, don't you want to ensure that the certificate they promise to provide will be accepted by everyone? Think long-term. Afterall, a bargain is only a bargain if you can use it for the purpose for which it was bought; and - as with most things in life - if it seems to good to be true... it probably is!