Certification
In order to meet the needs and expectations of staff, the customer, interested parties and the requirements of national and international regulation and legislation, UK Farmcare Ltd has implemented a management system which has been designed to meet the requirements of the following standards:
BS EN ISO 9001:2015 – Quality management systems requirements
BS EN ISO 14001:2015 – Environmental management systems
BS ISO 45001:2023 – Occupational health and safety management systems
UK Farmcare Ltd are also a UKAS accredited Inspection Body and testing laboratory (UKAS number 10205)
ISO/IEC 17020:2012 – Conformity assessments for bodies performing inspection
ISO/IEC 17025:2017 – General requirements of the competence of testing and calibration laboratories
Scope
ISO 9001 – The organisation, management and quality assurance of veterinary surveillance of livestock. The development and audit of testing standards for Bovine TB and other notifiable diseases.
ISO 14001 – The organisation, management and quality assurance of veterinary surveillance of livestock. The development and audit of testing standards for bovine TB and other notifiable diseases.
BS ISO 45001 – The organisation, management and quality assurance of veterinary surveillance of livestock. The development and audit of testing standards for bovine TB and other notifiable diseases.
ISO/IEC 17020 – The inspection and reporting of testing for bovine TB and other notifiable diseases.
ISO/IEC 17025 – The provision, organisation, management and quality assurance of veterinary surveillance of livestock for bovine TB and other notifiable diseases.
Prerequisites
The prerequisites for certification include current membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and holding the relevant Official Controls Qualification (Veterinary) (OCQ(V)) or other current panel approval. A veterinary degree is a prerequisite for RCVS membership.
Assessment Process
Candidates shall undergo assessment by a competent assessor, based on the requirements specified by the Animal and Plant Health Agency and relevant legislation.
Appeals
When an assessor has issued penalty points within an audit, the candidate may lodge an appeal for the decision to be reconsidered. The online Appeals/Complaints form must be completed stating the reason(s) for appeal.
Upon receipt, the appeal shall be considered by senior management and the decision to concur with or reverse the assessor’s recommendation shall be made known to the assessor, the appellant and any other interested parties. Records shall be updated to reflect the decision.
Complaints Handling Process
It is the policy of UK Farmcare Ltd to view any feedback, including complaints, in a positive manner and consider them as an opportunity for improvement. All such feedback shall be recorded and risk assessed based on the quality, health & safety, environmental, inspection, testing and financial implications. Subsequent actions will be determined by the risk rating. All stages of the process shall be reported including:
- Incident investigation
- Immediate actions to be taken to resolve the issue
- Root cause analysis
- Actions to prevent recurrence
- Results of investigations.Feedback to interested parties.
Impartiality and Conflicts of Interest
Impartiality Statement
One of UK Farmcare Ltd’s core values is its commitment to impartiality. It is therefore essential for UK Farmcare Ltd to manage any potential conflict of interest to safeguard impartiality in all of its certification activities.
UK Farmcare Ltd have in place safeguards – policies and procedures – that mitigate or eliminate threats to impartiality including procedures and risk assessment.
UK Farmcare Ltd fully understands the importance of impartiality in carrying out its management system and certification activities and its policies and procedures are designed to manage any conflict of interest and to ensure the objectivity of our management system and certification activities.
Certification of a person is based on objective evidence obtained through a fair, valid reliable assessment and shall not be influenced by other interests or by other parties.
Impartiality is extended to candidates and certified persons and is not restricted or compromised on the grounds of financial or other limiting conditions.
Threats to impartiality shall not be tolerated and any assessor who feels threatened shall immediately terminate the assessment and report the facts to the Business Manager and/or the Veterinary Services Manager who shall carry out an investigation and act on the findings.
Threats include:
- Self-interest threats: threats that arise from a person or body acting in its own interest to benefit itself.
- Subjectivity threats: threats that arise when personal bias overrules objective evidence.
- Familiarity threats: threats that arise from a person being familiar with or trusting of another person, e.g. an examiner or certification body personnel developing a relationship with a candidate that affects the ability to reach an objective judgement.
- Intimidation threats: threats that prevent a certification body or its personnel from acting objectively due to fear of a candidate or other interested party.
- Financial threats: the source of revenue for a certification body can be a threat to impartiality.
The Company promotes a culture that stresses the expectation that staff will act in the wider interest and the importance of impartiality.
Confidentiality
The purpose of this Policy statement is to ensure that everyone working on behalf of UK Farmcare Ltd is aware of their responsibilities when using confidential information.
The principle underpinning this Policy statement is that no employee shall misuse any information or allow others to do so.
The Policy statement has been written to support staff in compliance with the following legal requirements and best practice guidance:-
- Data Protection Act
- Human Rights Act
This Policy statement applies to all personal identifiable information, whether written, computerised or visual, or simply held in the memory of a member of staff. It applies equally to staff on permanent, temporary or voluntary placement.
Information about staff, which is processed for the purpose of their employment should be treated as confidential. Confidentiality should only be breached in exceptional circumstances and with appropriate justification. All staff should ensure that the following principles are practiced:
When you are responsible for confidential information you must make sure that the information is effectively protected against improper disclosure when it is received, stored, transmitted or disposed of;
Confidential information must only be accessed by you if it is appropriate to the job that you are employed to undertake;
If you are required to disclose information outside the team that could have personal consequences for an individual, you must obtain their consent. If the individual withholds consent, or if consent cannot be obtained for whatever reason, disclosures may be made only where they can be justified in the public interest or if they are required by law or by order of a court
If you are required to disclose confidential information you should release only as much information as is necessary for the purpose;
You must make sure that the persons to whom you disclose information understand that it is given to them in confidence which they must respect;
If you decide to disclose confidential information, you must be prepared to explain and justify your decision. If you have any doubts discuss them with your line manager.
Any queries concerning Policy statement should be brought to the attention of your line manager in the first instance.
Your contract of employment includes a commitment to confidentiality. Breaches of confidentiality could be regarded as gross misconduct and may result in serious disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.
Security
Documentation (internal and external) that relate to the fulfilment of the Standard are stored either electronically or in hard copy.
The documentation held electronically is stored locally on all PCs and laptops.
When an individual logs in to a PC or laptop, it is automatically synchronised with OneDrive. When a document is updated locally, it automatically synchronises with OneDrive, thus ensuring that the latest revision of a document is available to all necessary personnel. All documents are marked “Uncontrolled Copy When Printed”.
When expired or no longer needed, electronic documents and records will be archived or deleted at the discretion of the Business Manager and/or Veterinary Services Manager.
At the discretion of the Business Manager and/or Veterinary Services Manager expired or obsolete hard copies shall be shredded and sent for recycling.
The Company has achieved and will maintain Cyber Essentials Certification to further enhance its security arrangements.
Security statement of intent
UK Farmcare Ltd shall:
- Put measures in place to ensure that awareness of data protection will enable breaches to be reported more easily.
- Issue guidance on how to report PII breaches for analysis, categorisation and response.
- Provide resource to analyse reported PII breaches to identify those that are incidents requiring a structured response.
- Assemble breach response teams with a defined responsibility assignment matrix, as required, to contain and recover from security incidents.
- Ensure that its contemporaneous logs of incidents are kept.
- Hold periodic post resolution lessons learned meetings to focus on trends and improvements to reduce the likelihood and impact of recurrence, as appropriate.
- UK Farmcare Ltd recognises that in some instances PII breaches are beyond its reasonable control and the importance of being prepared for such eventualities.
- UK Farmcare Ltd shall ensure that it reacts appropriately to any actual or suspected PII breaches.
UK Farmcare Ltd recognises that a structured response to PII breaches has a number of clear benefits to it including:
- Improving overall PII security
- Reducing adverse business impacts
- Strengthening the PII breach prevention focus
- Strengthening prioritisation
- Strengthening evidence collection and custody arrangements
- Contributing to budget and resource justifications
- Improving updates to information governance risk assessment and risk management
- Providing PII security awareness and training material
- Providing input to PII security policy reviews via lessons learned.