Aims of Certification

As a Certification Body our overall aim is to give confidence to all interested parties that a management system, product, service, process or person conform to specified requirements. Requirements can usually be found in particular standard or scheme that we are certifying an organisation to).

“The value of certification is the degree of public confidence and trust that is established by an impartial and competent assessment by a third-party.“
ISO 17021-1:2015 Clause 4.1.2 and others.

Interested Parties

Parties that have an interest in certification include, but are not limited to

a) the clients of Assurco;

b) the customers of the organisations who are certified by Assurco;

c) governmental authorities;

d) non-governmental organisations;

e) consumers and other members of the public.

Assurco maintains an interested parties register which includes the needs and expectations of those parties. This also informs our risk assessment and helps us ensure impartiality.

Principles for Inspiring Confidence

— impartiality; delivered through our public impartiality policy, impartiality committee.

— competence; delivered through our competence management and people development programme.

— responsibility; delivered through our assigned responsibilities and layered Governance, Technical and Impartiality Committees.

— openness; delivered through our commitment to transparency, by publishing information about our activities on our website and this knowledge base.

— confidentiality; delivered through our risk-based approach to information security, cyber security, data protection and privacy.

— responsiveness to complaints; delivered through our complaints procedure and KPIs, monitored by our impartiality committee.

— risk-based approach; delivered through our risk management programme using the principles of ISO 31000.