CHAS Accreditation, is a government run (not for profit) scheme administered by the London Borough of Merton. CHAS (Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme) has been developed and refined over a number of years by local government health and safety and procurement professionals, with the support of the Health and Safety Executive.
Although CHAS has been developed by government bodies, it is available for use by any public and private sector organization as an aid when short listing contractors, suppliers and consultants who apply to work for them. CHAS provides information and assurances about the health and safety systems and competences of the organizations who have been CHAS assessed or are registered as CHAS accredited.
To become registered with CHAS, organizations have to submit an application to CHAS and then have a CHAS assessment carried out. By doing so their potential clients know that they meet minimum acceptable standards of health and safety compliance. Clients from both the public and private sectors use CHAS to make assessments of contractors in this way.
Once the CHAS application has been approved for an organization, their details are uploaded to the CHAS database where client members of the Scheme can review an organizations details to check that they are in fact CHAS registered. One of the benefits to contractors is that by making a successful CHAS application, they can demonstrate to a wide number of potential clients that they achieve or exceed the minimum standards laid down by the assessment scheme.
Furthermore with the implementation of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM), there are stricter requirements on Clients and Principal Contractors to ensure that they only employ ‘Competent Contractors’. CHAS has been named in the CDM Regulations by the Health and Safety Executive as being one of the assessment schemes that can be used when demonstrating your competence as an organization.
If you have any questions on CHAS and how to submit and application please get in touch.
