What UKAS accreditation actually covers
UKAS accreditation sits behind an ISO 14001 certificate, an ISO 50001 certificate, and a UK ETS verifier's sign-off alike — but its legal basis, its sixteen accreditation activities, and the rule stopping a certifier from also being your consultant are rarely explained together. Its own memorandum of understanding is not even legally binding; the statutory instrument underneath it is.
A statutory appointment, not a memorandum
UKAS's authority comes from a statutory instrument. The memorandum of understanding that describes its scope in detail says of itself that it does not bind anyone.
DBT appointed UKAS as the UK’s national accreditation body under 1 regulation 3 of the Accreditation Regulations 2009 (SI 2009/3155). That is the legal appointment. The DBT–UKAS Memorandum of Understanding, dated 2023, corroborates and details the relationship — but says of itself, at ¶11.1: “The Memorandum is an operational document and is not legally binding.”The statutory instrument is the master; the MoU is corroborating detail, not the source of UKAS’s authority.
The MoU is nonetheless where the operative detail sits. ¶3.1: “The activities for which UKAS is appointed by the Secretary of State as the sole national accreditation body … are set out in Appendix 1. … UKAS will not undertake accreditation outside the scope of the activities in Appendix 1.” ¶9.2: “the Secretary of State will only recognise accreditation of UK CABs by UKAS…” The memorandum has been effective from 14 September 2023(¶11.3).
One more precision most descriptions miss: regulation 3 exists in two versions. The England, Wales and Scotland text, as amended, appoints UKAS for the purposes of the retained accreditation and market-surveillance regime as “the UK national accreditation body”. The Northern Irelandtext was not touched by the 2019 EU Exit amendment and still reads that UKAS is appointed “for the purposes of Article 4(1) of the EC Regulation as the national accreditation body” — consistent with the MoU’s own ¶2.2, which confirms that in Northern Ireland “Regulation (EC) No. 765/2008 … will continue to apply (as a result of the Windsor Framework)”. A claim about UKAS’s statutory basis that does not name the extent is incomplete.
Sixteen accreditation activities, not five
From certifying management systems to accrediting GHG verifiers, UKAS's Appendix 1 covers sixteen distinct activities, spanning eighteen named standards.
Appendix 1 of the MoU sets out every activity UKAS is appointed to accredit. Counted row by row, the total is sixteen — considerably more than the five-standard sketch that circulates in some summaries.
Management systems and greenhouse gases
ISO/IEC 17021-1 (certification of management systems — the standard behind accredited ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 certificates) and ISO 14065 (accreditation of greenhouse gas validation and verification bodies) sit in the same appendix as everything below.
ISO 14065 is not a GB Designated Standard — it sits under "Other Requirement" and is EU-harmonised in Northern Ireland.
Persons, testing and inspection
ISO/IEC 17024 accredits the certification of persons — a distinct activity from certifying an organisation, and the reason UKAS can stand behind a scheme that certifies individuals without that being "accrediting a consultant".
ISO/IEC 17025 (with 15195), ISO/IEC 17020 and ISO 17034 cover testing, calibration and inspection bodies and reference material producers.
Validation, verification and the remainder
ISO/IEC 17029 is the generic validation-and-verification standard that ISO 14065 itself sits under as a sector application.
The remaining rows — ISO 15189 (with 22870), ISO/IEC 17043, ISO/IEC 17065, ISO 20387, QSI, IQIPS and BS 70000 — cover medical laboratories, proficiency testing, product certification, biobanking and specific UK schemes.
Appendix 1 counts sixteen accreditation ACTIVITIES; two rows are conjunctions of standards, so eighteen standard designations sit across those sixteen activities.
Accreditation activities in Appendix 1
ISO 14065 · ISO 15189 · ISO 15189+22870 · ISO/IEC 17020 · ISO/IEC 17021-1 · ISO/IEC 17024 · ISO/IEC 17025 · ISO/IEC 17025+15195 · ISO/IEC 17029 · ISO 17034 · ISO/IEC 17043 · ISO/IEC 17065 · ISO 20387 · QSI · IQIPS · BS 70000.
Two rows pair standards, so eighteen designations sit across the sixteen activities — and ISO/IEC 17011 is the standard UKAS itself operates to, not a seventeenth activity.
There is no consultancy category
UKAS's public directory and its statutory Appendix 1 both stop at certification, testing, inspection, calibration and validation/verification bodies — consultancy is not on either list.
UKAS’s public directory filters by Testing Laboratories, Certification Bodies and Inspection Bodies. No consultancy category exists in it, and none appears anywhere among the sixteen activities in Appendix 1. UKAS never prints the literal sentence “UKAS does not accredit consultants” — but with ¶3.1’s closing line that “UKAS will not undertake accreditation outside the scope of the activities in Appendix 1”, the negative is provable positively rather than resting on a search miss.
UKAS can accredit a body that certifies persons under ISO/IEC 17024 — but that accredits the certifying body, not the individual being certified, and it is not a consultancy accreditation either. Never write “UKAS-accredited consultant” — the phrase describes something UKAS does not do.
A certifier cannot also be your consultant
ISO/IEC 17021-1 bars a certification body from providing management-system consultancy to the organisations it certifies, with a two-year cooling-off period in both directions.
ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, 2 clause 5.2.5, states: “The certification body and any part of the same legal entity and any entity under the organizational control of the certification body shall not offer or provide management system consultancy.” Clause 5.2.6 bars certification for a minimum of two years following completion of internal audits the body provided to that client; 5.2.7 applies the same two-year bar where a related entity provided the consultancy; and 5.2.8 goes further still: “The certification body shall not outsource audits to a management system consultancy organization, as this poses an unacceptable threat to the impartiality of the certification body.”
These clauses bind the certification body, not the consultant. A consultancy remains free to help a client implement ISO 14001, ISO 50001 or any other management-system standard; what it cannot do is also be the accredited body that certifies the result. The catalogue record for ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015 is independently verified — Edition 1, 2015-06, “last reviewed and confirmed in 2020” — but the operative clause text itself sits behind ISO’s paywall and was not independently re-derived here; that gap is declared rather than papered over.
One live relevance worth flagging: B Corp’s current certification model requires certification by “an independent, B Lab-approved third party assurance provider meeting requirements based on ISO 17021-1” — so the same independence architecture now reaches beyond conventional management-system certification.
What is UKAS, legally?
UKAS is the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, appointed as the UK's sole national accreditation body under the Accreditation Regulations 2009, SI 2009/3155, regulation 3.
That regulation is the legal appointment — a DBT–UKAS Memorandum of Understanding sits alongside it, but the MoU says of itself, at paragraph 11.1, that it 'is an operational document and is not legally binding'.
The MoU corroborates and details UKAS's scope; the statutory instrument is the master.
Does UKAS accredit consultants?
No.
UKAS's public directory filters by Testing Laboratories, Certification Bodies and Inspection Bodies — there is no consultancy category, and none appears anywhere in the sixteen accreditation activities listed in Appendix 1 of the DBT–UKAS MoU.
UKAS itself never prints the literal sentence 'UKAS does not accredit consultants', so the safe form is the positive one: UKAS's published scope covers certification, testing, inspection, calibration and validation/verification bodies, and consultancy is not among them.
Never write 'UKAS-accredited consultant' — the phrase describes something UKAS does not do.
Can a certification body also be my sustainability consultant?
Not if it wants to keep its accreditation, and not for at least two years either way.
ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, clause 5.2.5, states that a certification body 'shall not offer or provide management system consultancy'.
Clause 5.2.6 bars certification for a minimum of two years following completion of internal-audit consultancy the body provided to that client; clause 5.2.7 applies the same two-year bar where a related entity provided the consultancy; clause 5.2.8 bars the certification body from outsourcing audits to a management-system consultancy organisation at all, calling it 'an unacceptable threat to the impartiality of the certification body'.
These clauses bind the certification body, not the consultant — a consultancy remains free to help a client implement a standard; what it cannot do is also be the accredited body that certifies the result.
How many standards does UKAS accreditation actually cover?
Appendix 1 of the DBT–UKAS MoU lists sixteen accreditation activities, from ISO/IEC 17021-1 (management systems) and ISO 14065 (greenhouse gas verification) to ISO/IEC 17024 (certification of persons) and ISO/IEC 17025 (testing and calibration).
Two of those sixteen rows are conjunctions of paired standards, so eighteen distinct standard designations sit across the sixteen activities.
Appendix 1's own note 2 adds that a complete list of management-system certification standards is maintained separately on UKAS's website — so Appendix 1 bounds the accreditation activities, not every certifiable standard beneath them.
Is UKAS's legal basis the same across the whole UK?
Almost, but not quite.
Regulation 3 of SI 2009/3155 exists in two versions.
The England, Wales and Scotland text (as amended) appoints UKAS for the purposes of the retained EU accreditation and market surveillance regime as the UK national accreditation body.
The Northern Ireland text was not amended by the 2019 EU Exit instrument and still reads that UKAS is appointed 'for the purposes of Article 4(1) of the EC Regulation as the national accreditation body' — because, per the DBT–UKAS MoU itself, Regulation (EC) No. 765/2008 continues to apply in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework.
A claim about UKAS's statutory basis that does not name the extent is incomplete.
Does UKAS accredit GHG verification bodies?
Yes — ISO 14065 ("the accreditation of greenhouse gas validation and verification bodies") is one of the sixteen activities in Appendix 1.
It is the standard behind a UK ETS verifier's accreditation.
The verification standards themselves, and the UK ETS-versus-SECR mandatory/voluntary split, are covered on the companion guide to GHG verification standards.
Related guides & references
GHG Verification: ISO 14064, UK ETS and ISAE 3410
ISO 14064 and ISO 14065, UK ETS’s mandatory accredited-verifier duty, and why ISAE 3410 is being withdrawn
UK SRS Sustainability Assurance
ISSA (UK) 5000, the FRC Interim Register, and why no UK entity must assure its sustainability disclosures
ISO 50001 vs ESOS
Choosing between an ESOS energy audit and a UKAS-accredited ISO 50001 certificate as the compliance route
ESOS Lead Assessors and the Approved Registers
A different kind of oversight — professional-body registers, not UKAS accreditation
SECR — Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting
Why SECR carries no verification requirement, and what to check if you engage one anyway
GHG Protocol: Scopes and Calculation Methods
The accounting methodology an accredited verifier or assurer checks against