How long does SSIP accreditation take?

SSIP accreditation looks at your health and safety policies and practices and verifies whether you’re safe to conduct the work you do.

The length of time this process takes is dependent on what SSIP scheme you decide to go with, your membership plan and your response time and ability to provide the relevant documentation.

The speed of accreditation is very much dependent on the responsiveness of members.

Making sure you submit the right documents and are available to the Auditor will play a big part in getting accredited quickly.
To give you an idea of timings, at SafeContractor we offer plans for every business to meet your needs:

• Standard Membership typically a response within four weeks
• Premier Membership within three working days
• Express Membership within four working days
• Assisted Membership within ten working days

Tips for a smooth SafeContractor accreditation

Have your documents ready for accreditation.

In most cases the core documents we ask for are your:

• Health & Safety policy
• Risk assessment
• Training evidence
• Trade qualifications
• Health & Safety representative
• Declaration of any H&S infringements

We will also ask for more documents about the activities you undertake. Use our what we check tool here to get an idea of what documents you may need for accreditation.

If you need help with any of your documents, just ask. Our team of experts are always happy to help.
Don’t have any documents ready yet? Our sister company Alcumus PSM offers a full health and safety consultancy service. A dedicated consultant will work with you to make sure you have everything you need to run your business safely, find out more.

Select the work categories, industry roles and category activities which are undertaken by direct employees

Don’t waste time answering questions about activities which aren’t relevant to what your employees do.
Ask our team for advice on what activities to select when setting up your questionnaire if you’re unsure.

Make sure the documents provide are in the same name as the SafeContractor application

We can’t accept your documents if they’re not in the same name as your account with us.
Doing this check before sending them over will mean your TSO or auditor won’t need to come back to you to get the right information.

Make sure documents are in date

We can’t accept documents which aren’t in date, and in some cases over 12 months old.
Check that you’re sending us the document for the right year to avoid any delays.

Be available

Your auditor may have some questions around your documents when they’re reviewing them. Make sure you can respond to them in a reasonable amount of time to not delay your accreditation.

Ask for help

Anytime you’re unsure of something, just ask. The sooner you ask the sooner we’ll be able to help you and get you back on track for gaining accreditation.