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Impartiality policy

CC013 Impartiality Policy

  1. All our validation/verification activities shall be undertaken impartially.
  2. It is a mandatory requirement of our system before undertaking any project we will review all matters that could affect the impartiality of the outcome.
  3. We are responsible for the impartiality of our validation/ verification activities and shall not allow commercial, financial or other pressures to compromise our impartiality.
  4. We will monitor our activities and our relationships to identify threats to our impartiality.
  5. The identification of threats to impartiality can include balanced consultation with appropriate interested parties, with no single interest predominating.
  6. If handled correctly, just because we have a prior relationship with the client is not necessarily a threat to impartiality.
  7. If a threat to impartiality is identified, its effect shall be eliminated or minimized so that our impartiality is not compromised.
  8. When providing both validation and verification to the same client, we shall consider the potential threat to impartiality (e.g. self-review and familiarity) and shall manage this risk accordingly.
  9. The Review and decision following a project shall be made by personnel different from those who carried out the validation/verification project.
  10. We shall not offer or provide both consultancy and validation/ verification for the same claim from the same client.
  11. When there is an unacceptable threat to the impartiality, we shall not provide validation / verification activities to clients who have received consultancy relating to the same claim.
  12. This policy will be publicly available demonstrating that we understand the importance of impartiality in carrying out our validation/verification activities and manage our conflicts of interest to ensure objectivity.
  13. This Policy will be reviewed annually.

Gilbert Lennox-King and Tom Scott

Directors

2 February 2023

This Policy is based on the requirements of section 5.3 of ISO 17029:2019