What is CHAS?
CHAS (Contractor’s Health and Safety) is an accreditation scheme for building companies (including Principal Contractors, Subcontract trade companies, Designers, CDM Coordinators etc.). If a company is able to gain a CHAS accreditation, this is an excellent indication that the company complies with its legal duties for health and safety.

Why now?
CHAS has actually been running for some years, but you may have heard of it more recently for one simple reason – the CDM Regulations 2007. These regulations make it very clear that Clients have a legal duty to check out Principal Contractors (and Designers and CDM Coordinators) before they appoint them, and Principal Contractors have a duty to check out subcontractors before they appoint them.

Rather than coming up with long winded questionnaires and complex forms, it is far simpler for both Clients and PCs to simply ask if a company is CHAS accredited. This means that there is a guarantee that the company meets legal standards for health and safety.

Looks Daunting?
The standards that have to be met in order to gain a CHAS accreditation may appear strict, but mostly they are based on legal requirements that have been in place for years, and in some cases, decades. CHAS is not asking for anything that you should not be doing already.

Does CHAS really mean anything?
The simple answer is “yes it does!” It is not difficult to ‘fudge’ a questionnaire if you know the right words to use, but a successful CHAS accreditation requires actual evidence that you really manage your health and safety.

So CHAS approval really does mean a lot, and keeping it up means even more about the health and safety standards of your company.

How can HCS Safety help?
We cannot sort out your CHAS application FOR you, but we can work through it WITH you…

We will meet with you, either at your office or at ours, and go through the application form together. We can let you know how much needs to be done to be ready to send in the application. It may be a little, it may be a lot – it will vary enormously from company to company.

After the initial meeting, we can let you know exactly what the costs will be, when the training will be held, and also, we will give you a clear to-do list of issues that can only be tackled directly by employers.

Simply give us a call to arrange a meeting on 023 80 894695.