Contractor approval schemes| Article Index |
|---|
| Contractor approvals |
| What is CHAS Registration? |
| What Does CHAS Assess? |
| What Are The Benefits Of Belonging To CHAS? |
| How Do I Become CHAS Registered? |
| All Pages |
What is CHAS Registration?
CHAS stands for the Contractors' Health and Safety Assessment Scheme. This is a Government-run (not for profit) scheme administered by the London Borough of Merton. CHASÂ has been developed and refined over a number of years by local government health & safety and procurement professionals, with the support of the Health & Safety Executive. Although the scheme has been developed by government bodies, it is available for use by any public and private sector organisation as an aid when short listing contractors, suppliers and consultants who apply to work for them. The CHAS scheme provides information and assurances about the health & safety systems and competence of the organisations who have been CHAS assessed or are registered as CHAS accredited.
To become registered with CHAS, organisations have to submit an application to CHAS and then have a CHAS assessment carried out on their CHAS Application. 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 the CHAS Assessment Scheme to make assessments of contractors in this way. Once the CHAS application has been approved for an organisation, their details are uploaded to the CHAS database where client members of the CHAS Assessment Scheme can review an organisations details and CHAS application form 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 CHAS 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’. The CHAS Assessment Scheme 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 organisation.
