Recently, Sniffer (a charity delivering knowledge based solutions to resilience and sustainability issues) has let a contract on behalf of the UK environmental regulators (Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, and the Environment Agency for England & Wales) to undertake research into the alignment of outcomes of UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) accredited Certification Body EMS (Environmental Management Systems) audits with those of the UK regulatory processes.
The successful bid was won by Planet & Prosperity with my company providing technical support in background research & the role of accreditation and EMS certification.
Currently, the project is running a survey regarding third-party audits performed in the United Kingdom by UKAS accredited Certification Bodies and regulatory inspections performed by any of the three environment agencies within the UK as well as the views of EMS representatives within organisations.
I encourage you to participate in the survey developed the Research Team to further this research with all responses treated anonymously.
For further information, please see Ben Vivian’s original posting at http://linkd.in/MjR0zX and a link to the survey at http://svy.mk/L5KF6n