Standards and accreditation
Guidance for business and government departments.
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 a with the predecessor of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
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.
Last updated 14 September 2023 + show all updates
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Link added to refreshed MoU between DBT and UKAS.
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First published.