ACS approval: additional conditions
Learn about how we can apply additional conditions to your ACS approval and what this means for you.
If we approve your company under our Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS), your approval will be subject to certain conditions. These are called ‘approval conditions’ and are the same for every company.
We explain these approval conditions on pages 26 to 29 of Get Approved.
We may also apply additional conditions to your ACS approval. We can do this at any time – when we grant your approval or while you are already approved. These additional conditions will remain in place for the time we specify or until we confirm that they are no longer necessary.
You must meet our ACS eligibility requirements
You must meet our ACS eligibility requirements before we grant you approval. We do not use additional conditions to replace these requirements.
We explain these eligibility requirements on page 5 of Get Approved.
Why we apply additional conditions
We might apply an additional condition to your approval if we identify a risk. For example, we might find evidence that you pose a risk to:
- public safety
- public confidence in the ACS or the SIA
Or we might have found evidence that you risk falling below:
- proper standards in the conduct and competence of your business leadership
-
proper standards in your business operations
- our fit and proper conditions
- our approval conditions
- our ACS eligibility requirements
- our ACS standard
The purpose of the additional condition will be to manage and reduce the risk we have identified.
What additional conditions include
Each additional condition will be specific to the risk we have identified.
For example, if we find evidence that you might be failing to meet our approval conditions, we might require you to take and pass additional assessments so that we can check your compliance.
We give more examples of additional conditions on page 28 of Get Approved.
What additional conditions must include
Every additional condition will:
- clearly state what you must do
- include a timeframe for meeting the condition
- be proportionate to the risk we have identified
- allow you to appeal
Costs resulting from additional conditions
You must pay any costs resulting from an additional condition, such as paying for additional assessments.
Notifications and appeals
If we intend to apply an additional condition to your approval, we will write to you to explain why. The letter will tell you how you can send us an appeal before our decision comes into legal effect.
If you want to send us an appeal, you will need to do so within 21 days.
If we get your appeal within 21 days, we will look at the information you have given us. We will then let you know whether we stand by our decision.
Once our decision to apply an additional condition comes into effect, you have a further 21 days to appeal to a magistrates’ or sheriff court. You may have to pay the costs involved with making a court appeal.
We provide more information about notifications and appeals on page 29 of Get Approved.
Recording conditions
We publish all additional conditions of approval on our register of approved contractors. This allows:
- customers to be fully informed about your business before buying services from you
- us to hold you accountable for meeting the requirements of your additional condition
Reviewing and removing additional conditions
How often we review an additional condition depends on the nature and requirements of that condition. We will remove the additional condition once we are satisfied you have reduced the risk we identified.