CC013 Impartiality Policy
- All our validation/verification activities shall be undertaken impartially.
- 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.
- We are responsible for the impartiality of our validation/ verification activities and shall not allow commercial, financial or other pressures to compromise our impartiality.
- We will monitor our activities and our relationships to identify threats to our impartiality.
- The identification of threats to impartiality can include balanced consultation with appropriate interested parties, with no single interest predominating.
- If handled correctly, just because we have a prior relationship with the client is not necessarily a threat to impartiality.
- If a threat to impartiality is identified, its effect shall be eliminated or minimized so that our impartiality is not compromised.
- 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.
- The Review and decision following a project shall be made by personnel different from those who carried out the validation/verification project.
- We shall not offer or provide both consultancy and validation/ verification for the same claim from the same client.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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