RAMS for CHAS Accreditation

CHAS (now Veriforce CHAS) is one of the most widely requested UK contractor accreditations — councils, housing associations and principal contractors routinely ask for it before you can get on the approved list. The assessment reviews your health and safety policies, training records, insurance and — centrally for trades — your risk assessments and method statements.

What CHAS costs and the three levels

CHAS publishes "from" pricing that scales with organisation size (all +VAT, per year):

Level	From	What it covers
CHAS Standard	£429	Health & safety assessment with SSIP verification — the entry level most subcontractors need
CHAS Advanced	£659	SSIP plus the wider pre-qualification (former PAS 91) question set
CHAS Elite	£909	Common Assessment Standard across 13 risk areas — required for much public-sector work under PPN 03/24

CHAS states applications are usually approved within about 10 days, with a 48-hour fast-track available. If you already hold another SSIP certificate, you can apply through the cheaper Deem to Satisfy route instead of a full assessment.

The RAMS requirement is the same across every SSIP scheme

CHAS, SafeContractor, SMAS Worksafe and Constructionline's health and safety assessment all assess against the same SSIP Core Criteria — the HSE-recognised standard behind UK contractor pre-qualification. The RAMS evidence lives in Core Criterion 10: "Risk Assessment Leading to Safe System of Work", which asks for:

• Site or project-specific risk assessments created for a project within the last 12 months
• Safe systems of work or method statements for a project within the last 12 months (where applicable)
• COSHH assessments for any hazardous substances used (where applicable)

Two details catch small contractors out. First, the assessments must be site or project-specific — a generic template with no job details doesn't meet the wording. Second, they must be recent: RAMS older than 12 months don't count as evidence. If you employ four or fewer people and don't have written arrangements, SSIP allows you to describe verbally how you identify hazards and produce safe systems of work — but in practice a written, job-specific RAMS set is the simplest way to pass the criterion without discussion.

No scheme publishes an exact number of sample documents to submit. Assessors ask for examples relevant to the work you actually do, so the safe preparation is one complete, recent, job-specific RAMS (with COSHH where relevant) for each of your main work activities.

Where CHAS applications stumble

CHAS doesn't publish failure statistics, but consultancies that handle applications consistently report the same first-time issues: risk assessments downloaded as free generic templates with no relation to the actual work; control measures that say "take care" and "wear PPE" instead of naming the specific control; health and safety policies that are unsigned or more than 12 months old; and slow responses to assessor queries. The common thread is evidence that isn't specific to the business and its work.

Preparing your RAMS evidence with RamsDocs

The recurring stumbling block reported by consultancies that help contractors through CHAS applications is generic, copy-paste RAMS — documents that don't reference the actual work, site or controls. That is exactly what RamsDocs is built to avoid: pick the template for the task, and the builder produces a site-specific RAMS with the hazards, sequencing, control measures and COSHH triggers for that job, exported as a clean PDF.

To be clear about what that does and doesn't mean: RamsDocs prepares the documents assessors review — it is not endorsed by CHAS and no document can guarantee an assessment outcome. You remain the competent person who reviews and signs off the content. What it removes is the blank-Word-document problem: your evidence set is job-specific and dated within the last 12 months by construction, not assembled the night before the assessment.

Already hold another SSIP certificate?

SSIP runs mutual recognition ("Deem to Satisfy"): a valid certificate from one SSIP Registered Member is accepted by the others, so you usually don't repeat the full assessment — though the receiving scheme can still ask for supplementary information such as insurances. If you're choosing your first scheme, pick the one your client actually asks for; the RAMS evidence you prepare is the same either way.

Preparing for a different scheme? See SafeContractor, SMAS Worksafe and Constructionline.