Terms of Use

By using this website you confirm that you accept these terms and agree to comply with them. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

We recommend you also read our privacy policy and cookie policy, which explain how we handle personal data and what is stored in your browser.

The pages on this site describing ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, ISO 45001, ISO 22301, certification routes, timescales and typical steps are written to be genuinely useful, but they are general information. They are not professional advice about your organisation, and they cannot be, because we do not know your organisation until we have spoken to you.

Do not treat anything on this site as a substitute for a proper assessment of your circumstances. Any timescales, sequences of steps or indications of effort are illustrative and will differ for your business depending on its size, complexity, sector, existing systems and chosen certification body.

We work to keep the content accurate and current, and we update it as standards and practice change, but we give no warranty that it is accurate, complete or up to date at the moment you read it. Standards are revised, transition periods move, and accreditation requirements change.

Reading this website does not create a consultant and client relationship between us. That begins only when we have a signed engagement in place.

We are an independent management consultancy. We provide consultancy, training, and internal and supplier auditing services, and we support organisations through the certification process.

We are not an accredited certification body and we do not issue certificates of conformity to any ISO standard. Accredited certification is issued by a separate certification body accredited by a national accreditation body such as UKAS, following its own audit. The distinction is not merely formal: the international requirements for certification bodies prohibit the same organisation from both consulting on a management system and certifying it, precisely so that certification remains impartial.

Where our pages refer to auditing, that means internal audits, supply chain and second-party audits, pre-assessment gap reviews and support during your certification body's audits. It does not mean certification audits carried out for the purpose of granting accredited certification.

Nothing on this site should be read as a promise or guarantee that your organisation will achieve or retain certification. That decision belongs to your certification body.

"ISO" and the ISO logo are the property of the International Organization for Standardization. We refer to ISO standards by number and title in order to describe our services. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting on behalf of ISO, BSI, UKAS or any certification body, and we do not claim to be.

We do not reproduce, host or supply the text of any ISO standard. The standards themselves are copyright works and must be purchased from ISO, from BSI, or from another authorised distributor. If you need a copy of a standard, we will point you to where to buy it.

Any client names, logos or trademarks shown on this site remain the property of their respective owners and are displayed to identify organisations we have worked with, with their agreement. Their appearance does not imply that they endorse these terms or any content on this site.

Nothing on this website is an offer capable of acceptance. Descriptions of our services are invitations to get in touch, not contractual commitments.

Submitting the enquiry form does not engage us, does not reserve capacity, and does not oblige either of us to anything. The automatic acknowledgement email you receive is confirmation that your message arrived, and nothing more. Our aim of replying within 48 hours is a service standard we hold ourselves to, not a contractual term.

If we go on to work together, the relationship will be governed by a separate written proposal, quotation or engagement letter, together with our terms of business. Those documents, not this page, will govern the services, fees, deliverables and liability between us. If anything in them conflicts with this page, they take precedence for that engagement.

We own or are licensed to use all the intellectual property in this website and the material published on it, including the text, page structure, layout, design, graphics, illustrations and the IPAS name and logo. These are protected by copyright and trademark law.

You may:

• view and browse the site for your own use;
• print or download extracts for your own reference or to share internally within your organisation; and
• link to any page on this site, provided you do so fairly.

You may not, without our written permission:

• republish, redistribute or commercially exploit any part of this site;
• copy our content into your own website, proposals or marketing materials, or use it to train a commercial machine learning model;
• remove or alter any copyright, trademark or attribution notice; or
• frame this site, or present it in a way that suggests an association, approval or endorsement that does not exist.

Our status as the authors of the content must always be acknowledged where you rely on the permissions above.

You must not:

• use this site for any unlawful or fraudulent purpose, or with any unlawful or fraudulent effect;
• use the enquiry form to send spam, chain letters, marketing approaches, abusive or defamatory material, or anything that infringes another person's rights;
• submit false details or impersonate another person or organisation;
• introduce any virus, trojan, worm, logic bomb or other malicious code;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, the server it is hosted on, or any connected system;
• attack the site by way of a denial of service attack, or attempt to circumvent the rate limiting on our forms;
• scrape, harvest, crawl at abusive rates, or use any automated system to extract content or contact details from the site; or
• reproduce, duplicate or resell any part of the site in breach of these terms.

A breach of this section may be a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and cooperate with them, including by disclosing your identity where we can establish it. We may also withdraw your right to use this site immediately.

Where this site links to another website, including the sites of standards bodies, accreditation bodies, regulators or our service providers, those links are provided for information only. We have no control over the content of those sites and we accept no responsibility for it, or for any loss arising from your use of them.

A link is not an endorsement, and the presence of a link does not mean we have reviewed or approved everything on the site linked to.

We provide this website free of charge and we do not guarantee that it will always be available or uninterrupted. We may suspend, withdraw or restrict all or any part of it for business or operational reasons, and we will try to give reasonable notice where we can.

We may change the content of this site at any time, and we may update it without notice. We are not obliged to keep any particular page or piece of content available.

You are responsible for the arrangements you use to access this site, including your own internet connection and device security, and for making sure that anyone accessing it through your connection is aware of these terms.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded. Read the rest of this section subject to that.

We exclude all conditions, warranties and representations relating to this website that are not expressly set out in these terms, whether implied by statute, common law or otherwise, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort including negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, arising out of or in connection with:

• your use of, or inability to use, this website;
• any reliance you place on the general information published on it;
• any decision you take, or fail to take, on the basis of that information, including any decision about which standard to pursue, which certification body to appoint, or how to structure a management system;
• any failure to achieve or retain certification, or the outcome of any audit; or
• any virus, distributed denial of service attack or other harmful material that reaches your device through this site or through any site linked from it.

In particular, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of business, loss of anticipated savings, loss of contract or opportunity, loss of goodwill or reputation, loss or corruption of data, or any indirect or consequential loss of any kind.

Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded but can be limited, our total liability arising out of or in connection with this website and these terms is limited to one hundred pounds (£100). This reflects the fact that this website is provided free of charge and that you pay us nothing for access to it. It does not limit our liability under any engagement you enter into with us, which is dealt with in that engagement's own terms.

We expect visitors to this site to be businesses and the people who work in them. If you are in fact a consumer, that is acting wholly or mainly outside your trade, business, craft or profession, then nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights, and any part of these terms that would be unfair to you under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 does not apply to you.

As a consumer you may also bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom in which you live.

We may revise these terms at any time by amending this page. Please check it from time to time. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last substantively changed, and the version in force is the one published here at the time you use the site.

These terms, their subject matter and their formation are governed by the law of England and Wales. Subject to the rights of consumers described above, you and we agree that the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them.

If any provision of these terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be severed and the remainder will continue in full force.

If we delay in enforcing any part of these terms, or choose not to enforce it on one occasion, that is not a waiver of our rights and we may still enforce it later.

These terms are between you and us. Nobody else has any right to enforce them, and the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 does not apply.

If you have any question about these terms, email contact@ipasuk.com.