Guidance

Standards and accreditation

Guidance for business and government departments.

• From: Department for Business and Trade and Office for Product Safety and Standards
• Published: 11 November 2020
• Last updated: 14 September 2023 — See all updates

Standards and accreditation play an important role in the UK’s National Quality Infrastructure (NQI). They help to ensure businesses and consumers can have confidence that products and services they purchase meet regulatory requirements.

• Standardisation – creates the national and international standards that describe good practice in how things are made and done
• Accreditation – ensures that those who carry out conformity assessment, testing, certification and inspection are competent to do so

Both standards and accreditation are primarily voluntary systems, but some aspects of accreditation are mandatory, especially regarding conformity assessment.

The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the UK’s National Standards Body (NSB). It is responsible for producing national and international standards under an MoU with the Department for Business and Trade.

Read the Memorandum of Understanding between DBT and BSI. (PDF, 187 KB, 12 pages)

BSI has a Memorandum of Understanding with DBT. It provides a framework for BSI and the government to meet the challenges to the UK’s standards-making infrastructure, and recognises BSI is the UK’s national standards body (NSB), responsible for the UK publication, in English, of international and European standards.

BSI maintains the infrastructure for standards development in the UK, managing 1,200 technical committees. It represents the UK interest in the international standardisation organisations ISO and IEC and the European standardisation organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI.

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the UK’s National Accreditation Body. UKAS accreditation assures the competence, impartiality and integrity of testing, calibration, inspection and certification bodies. UKAS operates within the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding with DBT.

The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) within DBT has overall responsibility for standards and accreditation policy across government and has a sponsorship role with both UKAS and BSI.

For further, more detailed information please see the OPSS standardisation and accreditation pages.

Published 11 November 2020
Last updated 14 September 2023 + show all updates

1. 14 September 2023

   Link added to refreshed MoU between DBT and UKAS.

2. 11 November 2020

   First published.